Attitude Adjustment
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: At a certain point in a relationship like this, orders and boundaries get tested. At this point in this relationship, Hook should have known better.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: ** Attitude Adjustment

**Warnings: ** Real BDSM (can be embarrassing and misunderstood, even to the people involved. Or maybe especially.)

**Rating: **PG-13

**Continuity:** G1/IDW/WTF AU (post-script of "_Deconstruction_" round-robin)

**Characters:** Hook/Kup, Ratchet

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Shibara drew a doodle, __and Hook looked far too happy in it_.

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**Pt****.****1**

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He'd known he'd screwed up as soon as Ratchet frowned. His arrogance had gotten away from him again. Well, Hook tended to regard it as innate superiority, but the feeling that sank his tanks to his knee joints wasn't superiority. It felt more along the lines of '_Oops._'

He wasn't afraid of repercussions from Ratchet. The head medic might haul him aside for another lecture on professional conduct, but in the deca-vorn since the Autobot had taken over as his parole officer as well as job supervisor, the mech hadn't abused his position. He was strict, but not to the point that Hook feared him.

No, not him.

The surgeon turned back to his work immediately, cutting himself off mid-word and proceeding to ignore the labtech he'd been berating. The idiot shouldn't have brought him a misaligned calibrator in the first place, for Primus' sake! He was hardly going to let something that was basic medbay procedure slip past him. That would lead to shoddy repairwork further down the road. Letting some gearless technician get away with messing up standard procedure in the name of sparing the little twit's 'feelings' would be that one step down the road of good intentions that eventually killed somebody.

Hook was so busy justifying himself that he didn't notice his doom entering the infirmary until Kup cleared his throat from behind him.

Whipping around, the Constructicon's visor reset a few times in shock. Then surprise. Then disbelief that slowly, inevitably slid into queasy realization that, yes, somebody had ratted him out, and yes, that was actually a gag dangling from the Autobot's hand.

His head jerked up. Kup met his pleading gaze with a steely glare.

"I..."

"You know why. You deserve it and you know it, so **put it on**."

Dead silence filled the whole room. Even the patient with the dislocated shoulder and front axle had shut up in order to stare in half-horrified fascination at the tableau of a short, old Autobot calmly backing a tall, bulky ex-Decepticon up against the repair berth. Talented surgeon's hands rose, defense and supplication in one as the palms opened as if to fend off the smaller mech. Hook's head shook back and forth, but this was the same kind of reality victims of gravity denied: they were _going_ to fall, they were _going_ to hit bottom, and _oh frag_ it was going to hurt.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to flap his arms on the way down. "Sir, wait…" The normally confident voice had gone quiet and acquired a low, strained note. The rest of the room turned up their audios to eavesdrop. "This isn't necessary. I didn't intend - I mean, I made a mistake, but it's been so long. Surely a warning is sufficient - "

"Hook."

Ratchet started laughing, back by his office. He'd heard the busy medbay stop in its collective tracks and had come out just in time for his old friend to shut the ex-Decepticon fragger's trap with a single word. Whatever Hook heard in Kup saying his name, it made the mech flinch where he stood. His arms dropped to his sides like lead balloons.

Kup shoved the bit-gag up at his chest, and Hook's shoulders hunched as he arched back a little from the aggression. His visor averted, as if the Constructicon couldn't meet the Autobot's optics anymore.

Visor trained to the floor off to one side, Hook raised one hand and accepted the bit being pushed at him. Kup held onto it for a moment more, until Hook looked up just enough to meet his gaze for the briefest second and dip a shallow nod of acknowledgment. Acknowledgment of and obedience to the Autobot's order.

His embarrassment was an almost visible thing. In fact, it was visible: his hands shook fractionally as he slowly took the rings in both hands and brought the bit up to his lips. Close observers - to be honest, the whole slagging staff at this point, because anyone who wasn't on-shift had been called out of the breakroom by the breathless silence and Ratchet's gleeful giggles - noticed the nervous, shaky swallow that worked his throat tubing for an endless klik. It looked as if he were trying to scrape up the courage to open his mouth.

Kup folded his arms and met Hook's visor as it flicked up with the last, fading hints of hope bleaching the red to a pathetically pale, begging hue. Chill blue took that hope, bent it over one knee, and broke it into little pieces. Then it stomped about and crushed those pieces into even smaller bits, because Hook wasn't going to find even the tiniest shred of mercy in _this_ Autobot.

Hook all but cringed from that cold gaze, lowered his visor and his head, and silently opened his mouth to gag himself. The bit slipped between his lips, and his tongue was visible for a split second as it fought the bar, almost involuntarily trying to thrust it back out. Another swallow, however, and the rings settled on either side of his mouth, holding the bit in place and stretching his lips around it. His fingers fumbled as they never did during surgery, but he managed to buckle the straps behind his head.

The room sighed, oddly satisfied when the buckle snapped closed.

The surgeon seemed to shrink in his armor as the sound swept over him. Ratchet's gasping laughter was just one more whip-sting of degradation amidst the wider scope of his punishment. Hook locked his visor on the floor at his feet and straightened up to stand reluctantly before Kup, awaiting judgment.

The Autobot reached up and looped his finger through one of the rings, tugging experimentally to test the buckle. The larger mech staggered slightly, easily pulled by the tug as the bit put pressure on the sensor-laden corners of his mouth. A ripple of muffled laughter went around the infirmary at the sight. It was transparently, hilariously clear that everyone's least favorite stuck-up surgeon would follow their favorite story-telling sergeant wherever he was led, exactly like a meek little petrorabbit on a leash.

Kup smirked and let his thumb linger momentarily on the ex-'Con's unprotected bottom lip. "Good." His hand dropped away. "Now. You don't touch that."

The ex-Decepticon's visor never left the floor. He shook his head. '_No, Sir; of course not, Sir.'_

"It stays on all shift, Hook." The old mech's voice could have stripped plating down to bare metal. That was the kind of tone that drove fresh recruits into battle - or really hammered home that nothing but complete submission would be tolerated. "Got it?"

Hook's body shivered in utterly mortified humiliation, but his head dropped further in blatant surrender to the smaller Autobot's will. '_Yes, Sir; your orders are law, Sir.'_

"Maybe I'll take it off afterward. Maybe I won't. Either way, you don't so much as adjust it until I decide." The growl of Kup's engine was distinctly displeased, whatever the light smirk on the old clank's face said. The ultimatum had been issued a deca-vorn ago, but the Autobot's memory was as long as his tolerance for misbehavior was short. "For now, get back to work." The Constructicon's downcast gaze flicked up, trying to humbly appeal for leniency, but a stern huff made him quail. The visor went down again, and Hook hesitated only a moment longer before turned back around to continue what he'd been doing.

The Autobot looked over to where Ratchet had actually fallen over by now, still wheezing with giggles whenever he could catch a full vent. "Hey, Ratchet?"

"Y-yeah?"

"Keep an optic on him for me." One thumb jerked casually over his shoulder at the Decepticon, who stiffened into a huge-visored statue of shame. "Lemme know if he gets uppity again."

That earned a wheeze that sounded suspiciously like, "I love my job," but Ratchet managed an affirmative nod.

Kup gave the whole room a genial nod. "Sorry for interruptin' you, folks. This has been an emergency application of Operation: Ego Control." He strolled toward the door, practically riding the rising tide of laughter. "Thank you for your cooperation."

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_"Attitude Adjustment"_ pictures #1-4 by **Shibara**, available on Ao3

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	2. Pt 2

**Title: ** Attitude Adjustment

**Warnings: ** Real BDSM (can be embarrassing and misunderstood, even to the people involved. Or maybe especially.)

**Rating: **PG-13

**Continuity:** G1/IDW/WTF AU (post-script of "_Deconstruction_" round-robin)

**Characters:** Hook/Kup, Ratchet

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Shibara drew a doodle, __and Hook looked far too happy in it_.

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**Pt. 2**

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Of course that couldn't be it. Things were never that simple for Hook.

As if it weren't enough that Kup had waltzed in and gagged him, it had to happen near the _beginning_ of his shift. So Hook had a joor and a half of total humiliation to look forward to. Joy.

He kept his attention on his current project. The manufactory lab could make parts to the correct design specs, but lacing micro-circuitry through the parts and reassembling them into a working piece of a mech's body took far more skill. Hook's hands had to remain absolutely steady as magnifying lens clicked over his optical sensors, focusing in on the tiny filaments he was manipulating. The rectangular lenses shifted, rapidfire _click-click-click_s as one of his fingertips opened and seized a new filament for inspection in a miniscule pair of forceps. Was it the correct gauge? Yes. _Click-click-click_, and he went back to delicately lacing the sensor filaments into the gear array. The hands that every medic on Cybertron envied worked in precise, tiny motions unmatched by even other surgeons. It required total concentration, which was fortunate, because right now?

Right now, the project was the only thing keeping him from fleeing into the infirmary's washrack to escape the hysterical laughter that kept breaking out behind him. The gag in his mouth seemed to swell, pressing against the corners of his mouth and activating his throat intakes. His teeth pressed into the bar so hard he wouldn't be surprised if they were leaving indents. The strap _itched_, but the sensation wasn't physical. He knew it was discomfort from everyone staring at the back of his head, not real pain. The bit was meant to shut him up and leave a lasting impression of humiliation, not actually hurt him.

The lesson was, he knew, not to doubt that Kup could and would embarrass him in public in order to discipline him. He didn't touch the gag because he knew what the lesson was, and oh, it was effective. It was so very effective. He'd never wanted to shrivel up and die quite so much as he did right now, and nuts and bolts if he was going to defy Kup even by so much as a brush of a finger on the gag strap. He knew what the lesson was, but he didn't know what the punishment was going to be, yet. Like the Pit was he going to tempt the old sergeant's wrath by going against his express orders! He knew that a mere gag wouldn't be considered enough to punish his arrogance, and he swallowed against the metal bar in uneasy dread.

He'd disobeyed Kup once today already, and this was the immediate result. The order had been old, but the ancient green crankcase had laid out the consequences explicitly. Kup only ever gave one warning, and now Hook was paying for ignoring it. He should have known better. He'd _known_ what had been threatened, but he'd gotten overconfident. He hadn't actually believed the cranky glitch would follow through with a highly public correction like this. They'd carried on so long in private that he'd just come to assume that any consequences for his behavior would remain behind closed doors. He hadn't thought - but he should have.

Primus help him, Hook shouldn't have doubted. He'd known he was going too far when he'd shifted from berating the labtech to mocking him, but he had a difficult time controlling his vocalizer when it came to belittling other's flaws. Especially such obvious ones, and he'd felt justified. Justified enough to convince himself that Kup wouldn't actually dare follow through on his threat, but frag him. He should have known better. Kup probably _relished_ the opportunity to humiliate him in new and excruciatingly heightened ways, exposed to everyone's staring, and now the door was open. Everyone knew, and it was Hook's fault.

He'd been doing _so well_. The change in their relationship - he hesitated to call it that, but what else could it be? - a deca-vorn ago had brought an end to their official excuses. It'd left Hook with nothing to hide behind. He'd knelt before Kup because that's where he needed to be, and Kup had made sure to rub that fact in while training him. That had stung even through the weary fear Hook had suffered every orn; the training had been as mentally taxing as the Medical Academy's certifying examinations and as demeaning as one might expect when reduced from surgical specialist to pet.

As soon as he went off-shift, it'd been made clear that his time and body belonged to someone else. Every orn off-shift had been dedicated to that training, twining him further around the old Autobot's finger lesson by lesson until he jumped to obey the slightest gesture. The Constructicon had been broken down piece by piece and rebuilt into a toy.

_Slag_, it sounded horrible. Hook had lived every excruciating moment as he learned to bend before Kup's whims, and he couldn't excuse how terrible it had really been. There was no way to make years of losing rigged games and subsequently babbling futile apologies under a sadistic mech's foot sound any better. There was also no way to explain why the Constructicon kept crawling back for more. He cringed like a beaten cyberhound but craved his Master's approval just as badly.

And after years of floundering about trying to please the old crank, he'd finally been making progress. Almost a deca-vorn of intensive training had gotten him to the point where Kup graced him with a small stroke over his head or down his back after a task well-done. He was occasionally granted a half a joor of time for his own pursuits, even if it was only medical research or catching up on current events on the news-net while kneeling beside his owner's chair. Sometimes the Autobot put a finger under his chin, inspecting him with those unnervingly penetrating optics, and Hook actually met his standards!

Then, only sometimes, he'd hear those detested, coveted words that sent a sick rush of pleasure fluttering through his spark: _"Good pet."_

That made it worth everything. The small pains of minor damage and cy-gar burns; the whimpering desperation when Kup had him twisted and conflicted; even admitting how very much he wanted to be cast down from surgeon to slave. It was all worth it, because the old Autobot could make his spark _feel_ with a look, a word, or even a short message left on his internal comm.

Hook's hands were dead steady on the assembly rig, but his jaw worked, chewing on the bit. When the shift ended, Kup was going to strip away whatever good-pet privileges he'd gradually earned over the past deca-vorn. The ancient mech would grind him into the floor under his tires for this. Tonight was going to make the Constructicon regret so much as speaking to the labtech, much less berating him. He hadn't screwed up this badly in over a meta-cycle, and the penalty would be proportionately severe.

The surgeon was not looking forward to what might happen, yet he still blamed the labtech for whatever punishment tonight would bring. Why did having coworkers have to be so _difficult_? They were all a bunch of weaklings doing shoddy work and getting hurt feelings over him calling them out over it.

They were also gutless gossips with nothing more to do with their time than make fun of him. The metal of his helm practically crawled under the buckle at the back of his head as they stared and stared. Every few kliks, one of the medics or nurses would venture into his peripheral vision, optics fastened on his face as if not believing the gag was really there. His jaw clenched tighter every time, and their optics widened in glittering delight at his expense. Yes, it was true. Hook had indeed gagged himself on Kup's orders, and no matter how he tried to act as if nothing were the matter, his rigid shoulders and flexing throat cables belied his blank expression. After a long moment of staring, the watchers disappeared back behind him, and the giggling started all over again.

Almost worse than the laughter - they were laughing at him! _Him!_ - were the nonstop whispers. He was gagged, not deaf! The fools had enough tact not to say anything to his face, but they often misjudged their volume when chattering among themselves. The patients were less respectful and prone to raising their voices when trying to hold conversations over the distance between repair berths. The whispers started with giggles and disbelief ("Did you **see** that?! Oh my Primus, what the frag…"), but they quickly escalated as the nurses went from berth to berth, spreading information about just what Kup used to have been ("His parole officer? No way!") and the labtechs' collective dislike of Hook came to the fore ("He deserves worse, you know." "Oh yeah? Like what?"). The giggles descended into scandalized gasps and juvenile sniggering as they turned to torrid speculations on just what Kup did to Hook off-duty if this was a sample of public treatment.

Hook's visor faded to a horrified rose petal pink at first. The progression of gossip as everyone caught on was only a taste of how this would spread outside the medbay. His spark shivered in his chest, and the corners of his mouth pulsed as if the gag were a living thing stroking them ultra-sensitive under the attention.

Then the rage began. The gossip plunged headlong into territory that just didn't make _sense_, the more it spread out of control, and Hook's visor gleamed a vivid, angry red. What kind of sick monster did they think Kup was? Nevermind. He'd thought often enough that the old rustbucket had crawled out of the gutter to be his personal tormenting demon, but - Hook was no victim to be pitied!

No, he wasn't even going to touch that. The mass of two-dimensional rabble at his back obviously didn't have the first clue what they were talking about. The only thing they could think of was some weak, helpless Decepticon prisoner being taken advantage of for berthplay. For Primus' sake, why would Kup ever take Hook into his berth? Did these idiots not know a thing about their own sergeant? Kup could get laid by anyone he wanted just by stopping to tell a lewd story and waggling an optical ridge suggestively.

The twits obviously weren't using their heads. Or rather, they were using them to concoct fictions that catered to that prisoner-of-war/sex-slave novella genre so popular on both sides of the war. Hook had never seen the appeal of that particular fantasy fetish. It was drivel; poorly-written fiction for the unintelligent. POWs had been interrogated and often abused by their captors, but 'romantic' or 'sexy' were not words he'd have applied to the screaming, gory happenings. He'd been called in enough by Vortex to deal with the aftermath, and the victims had undoubtedly never enjoyed their forced interfacing. And neither faction could have been so stupid as to have trusted any prisoner who offered to serve in the berth in return for favored treatment.

If Kup had ordered him to his berth, Hook would have knocked him out before obeying. He'd be in a spark-box in the prison with his surviving gestaltmates right now, not standing in shaking hate in front of an assembly rig, listening to idiots simper about how _sad_ it was that the ex-Decepticons didn't have the power to stand up against their parole officers' sick desires. The twisted way they savoured saying that told him more than a few of the mechs behind him were getting off on the idea of defenseless prisoners getting 'faced through the berth.

Hook hated everything the old Autobot made him do, but - well, no, he didn't, not precisely. Kup had never, _would_ never force him to do anything that he didn't - er. Um. _Want_, although his thoughts stuttered over admitting that even in the privacy of his mind. The only mech who could ever make him say it aloud forced the words from him in stammering confessions that left the surgeon shivering with cathartic release every time, drained by the ego-crushing admission.

The point was that he could refuse at any time. He didn't, however, because it wasn't rape. It was pain, servitude, and - yes, public humiliation. It was surrendering control so fully he was completely mortified working with a gag on, openly mocked, but there was still a tiny, secret, _Not Thinking About It_ niggling thrill in the bottom of his spark chamber.

It wasn't anything that the crowd of simpleton gossips behind him could possibly understand with their warped perspectives. Or maybe he was the one with the skewed viewpoint, but he wasn't inclined to explain it to them why anyone could want any of this. 'Want' wasn't a strong enough word for the surging, perverse desire he felt, anyway, and there weren't words invented yet to explain how nothing the ancient mech did was excusable but that's how Hook _needed_ to be treated. It wasn't like he enjoyed it, not really…okay, perhaps sometimes, when his spark screamed his gestaltmates' fear and threatened to consume him through the links. Then Autobot's wise optics peered through him like they could see his fear, and those were the times Kup took control away because Hook obviously couldn't be entrusted with it when the surgeon had none left inside. Hook could sink gratefully to his knees and surrender, and he'd be protected from himself. He could relax out of the ever-present fear and just be taken care of.

No - yes? No. Yes. Hook hated it as much as he - he hated it, but he also -

The whispers and laughter had it all wrong. They were so wrong it catapulted Hook from embarrassment into anger, and the Constructicon's rage peaked.

_It wasn't like that_.

The labtechs clustered behind him were so busy dissecting his supposed submission to Kup's (apparently insatiable) interface drive that they didn't see the surgeon turn around until one of them noticed the bright reflection of red light off the polished metal table. The tech looked up - straight into the face of one of the Decepticon Elite's most capable warriors.

Everyone had always been aware that Hook was a Constructicon. He was a despicable Decepticon who'd rather kill them than repair them, but he was also bound by his parole sentence to do as he was told. They'd worked with him for vorns, and time had dulled the edge off his reputation. Most of them had fallen out of the habit of thinking of him as a dangerous, murderous fighter. He was still "that Decepticon," but the meaning of the word had changed as the peace had gone on. The ex-Decepticon parolees were being eased back into society.

That was kind of the point of a parole system, after all. Rodimus Prime didn't like the faction that'd killed his beloved hero, but Optimus Prime had always dreamt of a reunited Cybertron. Rodimus had set about trying to make that dream a reality by rehabilitating the prisoners who'd emerged as redeemable according to the war crime courts.

Hook had never been considered redeemable. He should have been boxed as a criminal, but the Prime had grudgingly allowed a few exemptions on a case-by-case basis. The Constructicon had certainly earned the criminal sentence. His case file had a note about why exactly he'd been spared, and it had nothing to do with an optimistic outlook where he turned over a new leaf and became an upstanding member of society. It had to do with a lack of qualified surgeons in a post-war world.

His exemplary adherence to parole stipulations had eased official pressure as the vorns had passed, however. Kup had updated the case file's behavioral reviews as his parole officer, and Ratchet had dutifully logged performance reviews there as well. The file, at least, made Hook look like a model parolee. He cooperated in any way possible.

The medical staff had gotten into the mindset of regarding Hook as the worst mech possible to work with, but not because he was an ex-Decepticon. On-shift, regulations mandated that they treat him as a certified medical professional, and it was an easy habit to fall into when he was scheduled regularly. They'd gotten used to him. He didn't seem evil, just…he was one of _those_ colleagues. The non-certified personnel hated his chassis. The nurses and medics loathed working with him. He had a vile temper and a huge vocabulary to express his contempt toward anyone who failed to meet his astronomical standards. The only thing worse than being ignored by him as inferior was somehow being singled out as even lower than the rest.

But he _was_ an extremely talented surgeon. Even his sworn enemies down in the parts manufactory laboratories had to grudgingly admit that. The mech had the finest-tuned hands science could create. Ratchet was older and had a wider range of abilities, but the Autobot Chief Medical Officer stepped aside when it came to the surgery theatre. He could do an emergency field-rebuild of a shattered fuel pump, but Hook could rebuild the whole damaged system.

So when the bulky yellow-green ex-'Con loomed over the table full of gossiping labtechs, the last thing anyone expected to see was the naked bodily _threat_ blazing in his visor. Suddenly, the bit-gag didn't seem quite so funny. As all four technicians looked up and gaped at the taller, heavier, scarier mech, half the room had the distinct impression that Kup's orders were all that were restraining him. The other half was busy thanking Primus (and possible Kup) that the gag was in place, because the surgeon could peel paint with his tirades when he _wasn't_ upset. Which he manifestly was.

Hook placed the gear array from the shoulder mechanism they were re-assembling on the table gently, because fury was no excuse for damaging his work. His visor, unencumbered by such restraint, never stopped visually stabbing the loudest speaker through the head. Violently and fatally.

Needless to say, he didn't look like the kind of mech who rolled over and submitted in a sex-slave novella.

The labtech stood shaking long after the ex-'Con turned and resumed working.

Ratchet emerged from his office soon after, having finally stopped his vent-clogging guffaws. He took a look at the fearful labtechs avoiding Hook's entire side of the room and narrowed his optics. The medics and nurses were concentrating very hard on their own work, but most of that work had migrated away from the surgeon's work station. A mysterious Demilitarized Zone surrounded the Constructicon, seemingly made of thin air and the frigid aura of seething hatred practically radiating off the mech's shoulders. The rest of the medbay's whispering gossipfest continued, but now it was muted and slightly whimpery, as if they were terrified they were going to get caught out and torn to bits. No one seemed willing to approach the Hook DMZ, and they seemed afraid that raising their voices might break the fragile infirmary armistice.

Something had evidently happened out here while he'd been busy laughing. Ratchet stood in his office doorway pretending to read a patient chart while he eavesdropped on the closest conversations. When he'd gone in his office, gossip had been centered around Kup sexually abusing Hook, a pathetically weak victim who'd probably asked for it in the first place. The gag had become been a giant joke shared by all, because it was meant to humiliate the surgeon as part of a sick game. Patients had been laughing, seeing him as a caricature instead of a surgeon, and even staff who knew Hook's surgical skill had been snickering disrespectfully. How sad, how funny, how _deliciously_ kinky.

There'd be a total 180 degree shift between then and now. Now rumor held that Kup barely had the vicious ex-'Con under control. The gag was there to keep Hook from ripping out their throats. The Constructicon was going to flay the metal off the next 'bot to so much as look in his direction. They were all going to die. Help.

What a load of Pit-slag, but Ratchet had heard the rumor mill churn out worse. He could pretty much reconstruct what'd happened from what he was hearing, and his own urge to laugh died as sobriety smothered the humor. It'd been funny at first, but now things were starting to sink in. Kup had dropped one fragging nuke of a personnel-issue bomb on Ratchet's orn.

He sighed and went to go speak with the patient with the busted shoulder mechanism who was urgently beckoning him over.

"You can't let him operate on me!" the patient hissed in a low whisper as soon as Ratchet was within audio range.

The head medic gave the mech his best unimpressed look. "Do you want the full range of motion back in your shoulder?"

"Well - yes! But you could," his functional shoulder shrugged uncomfortably, and the mech's optics slid away from the flat stare, "or there must be someone else available who could - "

"You were transferred here because your shoulder structure has been destroyed past the point of transformation, and that requires extensive surgery. It needs to be reintegrated at the nanite level in order to restore transformation functions," Ratchet laid out ruthlessly. "I could take your whole arm and most of your chest structure off and graft a new set on, but your original transformation is still going to be shot to the Pit, and I guarantee it will always be a weak spot. You're looking at replacement shoulder joints, if not arm and chest structure, ever four vorns or so. Two, if you keep taking lift jobs." He cocked his head, giving the patient a severe look of disapproval. Mechs of his build weren't meant for heavy construction lifting, which was probably what had led to the accident that'd crushed his shoulder in the first place.

The patient sank into the padded berth, optics huge at the prospect of that rather expensive future. "But...there are other surgeons."

"Yes," Ratchet conceded, because there were two others on rotation through the tri-sector area who could take this case. Neither of them were at the same level as Hook, and more importantly, removing Hook from a surgery case would be a rude slap to the face. For the whole facility, really, because it would set precedent that personal dislike of a medic was grounds for dismissal from a case. Allowing a foot in the door for discriminating against the ex-'Cons because of personal dislike could only end badly, anyway.

On the other hand, patients did have the right to refuse care. This required careful handling on Ratchet's part. "It'd push your surgery back at least six orns, however, and disrupt my schedule. Can you give me one good reason I should transfer you to one of them?"

The mech's mouth opened. It shut again. He darted a nervous look toward the hulking Constructicon working at an assembly rig over on the other side of the room.

There was a near-visible mood of black anger hovering above Hook's head, but other than that, the surgeon didn't look any different than when he'd first examined the mech's wrecked shoulder joint. Hook's engine had grumbled the whole time, but he'd been almost mechanically polite while speaking. He'd stiffly, and with much restrained disapproval, informed the patient that this injury could have been easily avoided if he'd been (not so idiotically stupid) wise enough to not take lift jobs. The poorly-masked contempt had affronted the injured mech a bit, but it wasn't like Ratchet hadn't just implied the same thing. Sometimes it was a medic's job to kick a patient in the aft with the bad choices that'd landed said aft in the medbay.

The surgeon certainly hadn't seemed like much of threat when he'd been before Kup. Petrorabbit in armor plating, that'd all he'd been. What a push-over, cringing before Kup like that. Of course, Kup was a legendary bad-aft among the Autobots, but still…he hadn't even needed to gag the big ex-Decepticon. Hook had just cowered and done it himself, then meekly gone back to work as ordered. Nobody doubted that their resident surly surgeon wasn't going to touch that gag until the old sergeant took it off him. Medical professionals knew what complete obedience to orders looked like, mostly because their patients didn't often have it. Hook? Total obedience.

All of which clashed badly with the mental image the infirmary now held of that very same surgeon looking one step from being elbow-deep in the first Autobot who looked at him funny.

Combined with Ratchet's shrewd question, that left the patient wobbling between facts and assumptions. "I think he'll kill me," he quavered after a klik of contradictory trains of thought pile-driving into each other on the track.

"First: I wouldn't let him. Second: **Kup** would let him." Ratchet looked toward the ceiling, calling on Primus' aid as the second reason actually seemed to reassure this problem patient. Oi. Millions of years as the Autobot Chief Medical Officer, and Kup could still out-charisma him. Well, whatever. As long as this mech stopped trying to muck up the surgery schedule, Ratchet didn't care. "And third…"

He turned on his heel and narrowed his optics imposingly. "I can't believe I have to say this to **anyone**," the eavesdropping staff around him winced, caught out as he lashed the whole room with a stern glare, "much less a group of fully mature and mostly-competent professionals, but a mech's personal life is his own business. So long as what you do in your **off**-duty time doesn't change your efficiency ratings **on**-duty, I don't give a frag if your friends come in here and paint you to look like Rodimus - but only if their tomfoolery happens during your break time!" Hook had gone stiff over by his station, frozen in shocked horror, and Ratchet glowered at his back. "If it doesn't affect your work, then nobody else has the right to say slag about it, and I'll put the first mech who forgets that common piece of **workplace courtesy** on report so fast even Blurr won't see it happen."

He drew himself up, folding his arms across his grill and sweeping a disapproving look across the shamefaced bunch of sparklings he seemed to be in charge of. "That being **said**. Hook."

If the Constructicon went any stiller, he'd be a living statue. Ratchet's scorn had whipped the lot of them back into thinking like civilized beings, but saying his name had snapped their attention right back to him. Frag his life. Lacking any way to make a vocal acknowledgment, Hook turned and gave his supervisor a level look. He was quite blatantly blocking out anyone else who might have been in his field of vision as beneath his notice.

Ratchet peered back at him sourly, as if he couldn't believe the turn for the weird his orn had taken. "I need to speak, ah, 'at' you in my office, please."

A ripple of nervous giggles went around the room as the wry wisecrack registered and Hook's visor popped wide in response. Kup had more charisma, but Ratchet was no slouch at managing people. Their CMO had an occasionally wicked sense of humor, and he wasn't shy about using it to break tension. Especially when the tension focused around an ex-Decepticon who out-massed most of them and was the attending surgical specialist for a quarter of them. Reining in the mockery was all well and good, but terrorizing the whole medbay had to stop.

The Constructicon unbent enough to dip a nod, although his teeth clenched visibly on the gag. Turning, he shut off the rig before walking across the infirmary with an aura of concentrated dignity wrapped firmly around him. The giggles subsided as he passed, then re-emerged in his wake. He staunchly refused to turn and glare the room into silence. That would require admitting that anything was wrong, and he wasn't going to give them that satisfaction.

Ratchet gestured him through the door before him and paused to give the medbay his best '_I Write Your Performance Reviews'_ look. The tittering died off again.

The silence outside the office was not nearly as awkward as the silence inside.

Hook hesitated, lingering by the door when Ratchet went around the desk to sit, but the chief medic irritably waved him to a chair. "Sit! Primus, don't make this any worse than it has to be," the Autobot muttered, slumping forward to bury his face in his hands. Forecast for the orn had taken a turn for the worse in a matter of breems, and now it was up to Ratchet to deal with the aftermath.

Situational weather in the medbay had clouded up with storms of hilarious and horrible, changing from one to the other in six short breems, with a front of possibly disastrous scheduled surgical procedure on the horizon. There was a 25% chance of emergency situations raining through the door, and a 25% chance of chaos sleeting in as word spread. That explained the 50% explosive personnel issues bearing down like a tornado. The wrong word said - frag, the wrong _look_ - might be the wind that pushed Hook into a towering storm of rage. Lab technicians could possibly drown in fear before the shift was out, and the patients were going to flee Hurricane Hook in droves if Ratchet couldn't manage damage control.

He looked out from between his fingers and made a face. 'Hurricane Hook' was currently sitting perfectly upright in a chair, looking as if relaxing enough to sit down comfortably would kill him. The stick-up-the-exhaust propriety was nothing new. Hook didn't relax around Autobots. He seemed to regard them all as potential threats, especially Ratchet. The ones who weren't active threats were inferior beings not worth deigning to acknowledge. Relaxing in a chair around such creatures would be beneath him.

The normal superiority complex had suffered quite a blow today, however, and Hook wasn't quite shoring up his bland mask as well as he'd like. His hands were laid flat in his lap, and he gazed down at them to avoid looking at his supervisor across the desk. The gag was mostly hidden from sight at this angle, but the ties made it clear that was something strapped around his head.

Over all, the mech gave the impression of being monumentally uncomfortable. Fair enough. In his place, Ratchet kind of hoped the mortification would kill him before gossip spread the news far and wide.

Speaking of which. "I seem to remember saying that I don't want to hear about this kind of stuff," he said into his hands. "In fact, I **seem** to remember you getting your cables in a knot about me repeating rumors about just this." He raised his head slowly, letting his hands drag down his face until he could fold them under his chin. Hook glanced up, met his optics for a split second, and immediately jerked his head around to look at the wall. What an interesting wall. It seemed that he felt the need to intently study all its details.

That just gave Ratchet an excellent side-on view of the bit lodged between his teeth. The medic looked at it, because there was no point denying what his optics saw. Slag, what the entire medbay had stood witness to! Far be it for him to judge another mech's personal life, but he'd judge the Pit out of it when it walked into _his_ medbay and became public! He'd lived a long time and seen stranger things, but he usually just got handed the leftovers from the show to repair. He'd rarely had the spectacle ever happen right in front of him.

And, yeah, it'd been fragging hilarious watching this arrogant afthead fall all over himself trying to appease Kup, but that'd been before it'd hit Ratchet that now _he_ had to deal with the aftermath. Namely, staff that looked to him to set an example of how to react, and an ex-'Con using anger to cover fear of public opinion and professional backlash. There were big, neon-sign-flashing important reasons this kind of thing usually _stayed_ private, slaggit!

Right. Well. The robot was out of disguise now, so no use trying to transform back. There was also no running away from what feeble duty of care he actually held toward an ex-Decepticon. Who...was also his subordinate and an excellent surgeon and a living Cybertronian like any other.

Maybe that duty of care wasn't so feeble.

"First off," he said reluctantly, because just because duty made him didn't mean he wanted to, "I have to ask. Is Kup hurting you?"

Death by embarrassment could apparently not come soon enough. Hook's head whipped around, visor wide and mouth working uselessly around the gag. He instantly yanked his gaze down, away from the resigned face of his supervisor. He seemed to start evaluating Ratchet's office supplies for the quickest tool for committing suicide. The red visor was so wide and bright it looked painful.

The head medic watched the reaction carefully and held it up against his limited psychology training. That was definitely some conflicted body language. Which was far, far more than he wanted to know about what Kup did for entertainment. "Let me rephrase that," he said, choosing his words slowly. "Is Kup forcing you to do anything you don't want to do?"

Whoa, boltcutters and wrenches - look at that stricken expression. Ratchet had never traumatized a Decepticon verbally before. Yep, suicide by office supplies was evidently on the schedule today. This 'duty of care' responsibility thing could be sort of fun if not for the fact that Ratchet's spark was writhing nearly out of its chamber in shared discomfiture. Because, dear Primus and all his little Primes, that looked like yet more conflicted body language.

Ignorance and bliss just weren't in the cards for him. Ratchet dropped his hands to the desk and went specific. "Does he rape you, Hook?" he asked in a monotone. He prayed internally that, please, don't let Hook nod 'yes.' Ratchet didn't know if he could handle bringing criminal charges against _Kup_, of all mechs, and the parole system would _explode_ if it were true. Also, the CMO was fairly sure he might just put his fist through the older Autobot's interface systems if Kup had been raping someone. Anyone. Even an ex-Decepticon.

Wait.

Hook's visor had slitted. His face went almost viciously indignant, and he shook his head just once. His teeth squealed against the metal of the bit with the force of their grinding, however, and Ratchet sat back in his chair as anger radiated out from the Constructicon. His hands went up, extended a little defensively even as he analyzed the reaction.

"I have to ask!" the Autobot protested. "I'm well aware of how strong you are physically," he said, guessing at the root of the indignation, and he got a self-righteous huff of agreement in response, "but a parole officer has leverage over his parolees. I had to make sure that Kup didn't - didn't - " The other tool dropped. "- smelt **me**, is that how I ended up your parole officer?!"

Indignation collapsed into squirming embarrassment once more. Hook's hands went to the armrests of his chair and anxiously clamped around them before he caught the nervous gesture and stopped himself.

Too late, however; Ratchet had already seen. That was all the confirmation he needed. He stared sightlessly into the open air above his subordinate's head, and Hook could almost see him looking back through the vorns through a different perspective. All those little 'accidental injuries' as the surgeon mysteriously became clumsier and clumsier outside the medbay. All the times Kup had come in to speak with the medbay staff, or taken them out to drinks. The way Hook would come back after a particularly rough interpersonal conflict seeming to have reconsidered his behavior. The way Kup had stared the Constructicon down any time he'd been called on to mediate for his parolee.

The slow progression of small, individual incidents until that massively out-of-character series of apologies to the non-certified staff. At the time, Ratchet had thought it was just the Prime dictating terms and Kup making Hook comply, but those apologies had been far more detailed than anything Rodimus would have demanded. There must have been a lot of unseen pressure brought to bear on the Constructicon, but Ratchet had never thought about where the outside force was coming from. That had been _years_ ago, however, and Hook's subsequent restraint on his innate arrogance had seemed like a natural result of how much he'd hated having to humble himself. Except that it'd never occurred to Ratchet to wonder why any of it had happened in the first place. He'd been missing an essential piece of the puzzle.

Now, looking back at it, the thing that stood out the most was the fragging _comm. call._ He'd thought it'd been the high grade coloring his memory, but now, a deca-vorn later…

"This has nothing to do with interfacing, does it?" Ratchet asked steadily, still staring into space. Hook felt about a meter tall as the pieces snapped into place in the Autobot's mind. He shook his head, hesitated, and shook his head again. Oh, look, what a fascinating floor. Maybe it would open up under his chair and spare him this conversation if he stared at it hard enough. "And he arranged this," the head medic went on. "Us. To prevent conflict." The parole officer change, he meant, and his parolee shifted about on the chair like it was a few million degrees hotter than room temperature. "I take it that you two are in some sort of an actual relationship."

Why wasn't the floor opening up to swallow him whole? Hook gave it a betrayed look. Blue optics came down and regarded him with an unnatural calm as things clicked about behind them, and the Constructicon desperately prayed to become one of those mysterious cases of spontaneous combustion Skywarp had always nattered on about.

Due to lack of fiery demise, he was forced to nod that, yes indeed, Ratchet had nailed it on the head.

Kup. Hook. In a...form of...personal relationship...

"Let me make this perfectly clear," Ratchet droned. "I do not want details. I don't even want to know what it is that you're consenting **to**. I just need to know that whatever it is you're doing," his voice strained slightly on that, "is really consensual."

The bulky mech sitting in front of the desk suddenly looked much smaller than he had any right to be. He seemed to crumple inside his armor. The wide red visor looked down into his lap, and even from that angle, Ratchet could see the way his throat worked.

"I can promise your safety is assured," the Autobot said more kindly. "If he has taken advantage of you in any way, Hook, the law is on your side. We may not like each other, but you are still one of my staff members. This is my responsibility as your parole officer as well. Just answer my question, one way or the other." He spread his hands as if inviting an answer and waited until the fidgeting ex-'Con glanced upward. "Is it consensual?"

Hook's tongue pushed futilely at the bit. Primus alive, what he wouldn't give to be able to speak! If he could just protest this invasion of his personal life or at least explain that the rumors were wrong!

He couldn't really protest anymore. Kup had made their personal lives public, and as much as Hook hated the very idea, under these circumstances it was his supervisor's duty to insure his…safety. The Constructicon really, really didn't want to talk about any of this, but as soon as the strap had buckled closed, the gag in his mouth had become a potential workplace issue.

The Autobots were all about freedoms and inherent rights, even as they took away the rights of the ex-Decepticons. The parole system was supposed to be a way for the ex-'Cons to slowly earn those freedoms back. It eased them into Cybertron's post-war society via work programs and a slow introduction through controlled methods to how Autobots did things. One of those things was the freedom of personal expression. The Autobots had always had fewer restrictions, but now there were things popping up among the ex-'Cons that would have _never_ been allowed during the war. Regulations were much looser in a post-war world, however, and Hook had been seeing some oddball personal choices among the rank and file. The brilliant light-piping and racing stripes were tacky enough, but spinning wheel rims and a spoiler on a _flyer_ was just - ugh. But the Autobots allowed it, because it was some sort of 'personal choice' slagging right.

A gag? That was pushing it.

It wasn't a matter of consent. Kup had never, would never - Hook was a prisoner, not a victim. He'd always had the choice to walk away, retreat into the formalities of the parole system or just walk away, even when the pressure to obey had seemed unbearable. He hated the old clank, but even as he thought that, it rang false. The pressure to obey had been the hand guiding him out of the box of terrified claustrophobia and numb pain that his spark had become, and he clung to that hand despite how much he hated _himself_ for needing its steel grip on him. Because look how well things had gone without Kup ushering him along.

It couldn't be explained simply, if at all. He had a choice, but he didn't, and if he wished he could explain it in a way that made sense outside his own head. This wasn't as easy as a personal choice. It also wasn't something Hook had ever spared a thought to explaining in terms of a workplace environment or even to other people. The closest he'd ever come to an explanation had been to Rodimus Prime, and that had finally been passed on to - Kup, he supposed. He certainly hadn't been contacted by the Prime, in any case, and the damaging rumors had dried up within a few orns.

This was worse than rumors. Not in terms of a court martial, but in terms of his job and what he was going to face off-shift. So it was worse, but it wasn't? Oh, the more he thought beyond the immediate humiliation, the more horrible this whole incident became! This could earn him an official reprimand in his parole file if his supervisor decided the gag was unprofessional instead of that nebulous concept of 'personal expression' Hook didn't fully understand in the first place. And he couldn't take it _off_ or even swear it wouldn't happen again; it wasn't his _place_ to make that sort of decision anymore!

Ratchet watched the small, convulsive movements of the Constructicon's mouth around the bit. It was a sign of humiliation, embarrassment, and agitation, but all the signs he was keenly searching for weren't there. The mech's shoulders were hunched, and he seemed to want to disappear into thin air, but he wasn't shuddering with the kind of conflict an abuse victim would have in this situation. This was horror from being exposed as a kinky bastard, not from being forced to indulge someone else's fetishes.

He also noted that Hook fought the bit, but not once did his hands move toward it. It wasn't like Ratchet was going to tattle-tale to Kup, especially in the context of this conversation. It'd be an easy enough for the surgeon to just take the slagging thing out, speak with his supervisor one-on-one, and then put it back on. No one outside this office would ever know.

But he didn't seem to even be thinking about it. That, if nothing else, gave the Autobot CMO perspective on just how long and involved this, er, 'relationship' was. He'd trained nurses on standard procedure for deca-vorns, and they still reacted on automatic when startled. Ratchet was probably scandalizing Hook every other word in this one-sided conversation, but the mech remained utterly obedient to Kup's orders. The old sergeant had trained newbie Autobots for millions of years, turning civilians into soldiers. Apparently, he was just as adept at turning surgeons into slaves.

Maybe that obedience was a mercy in disguise. It did make this conversation awfully simple.

Defeated, Hook's visor turned down to the floor, and he nodded. It was - _argh no no he didn't want to admit it_ - consensual. Which put the blame for any sort of workplace consequences squarely back on his own shoulders, because Kup couldn't have put the gag on him in public if there hadn't been implicit agreement already in place.

"Are you sure?"

Another nod.

"Positive."

Nod nod.

"You **agreed** to this slag?" Hook's head shot up like Ratchet had goosed him, visor blushed crimson, but the head medic only smirked back with his head pillowed on one fist. "And that's the reaction I was looking for," he said softly, approving of his charge's fierce indignation if not the cause of it. "Nobody gets so defensive about that if he doesn't secretly enjoy getting his bolts smacked around."

And just look at Hook get flustered all over again. His crane cable practically snapped, it went taunt so fast.

Ratchet's smirk widened into a genuine grin. He really wanted to hear nothing about what Kup did to this mech in the privacy of their quarters - aaaack, blech, mental image of them _sharing quarters_, please Primus no don't inflict that on his poor CPU! - but the heckling potential here could be great fun. Hook was normally as approachable as a fortress. He had walls around himself that were blank, thick, and so painstakingly neutral that they didn't need to be hostile to make anyone who tried to pass them feel extremely unwelcome. Even if he weren't the ex-Decepticon Constructicon, his wary distance around the Autobots had prevented anyone from ever exchanging more than small talk to pass the time during shifts.

Trying to integrate the surgeon into the social structure of the staff beyond the shallow professional level had been something on Ratchet's To-Do list for a while. The problem had been that nobody in the infirmary had the slightest clue how to venture into personal territory with the mech. Slag, Ratchet was his parole officer, and the head medic still didn't know what the ex-'Con was like outside of the medical field. He honestly had been mostly apathetic toward finding out, but the parole system was in place for a reason. It was his job to rehabilitate Hook, however doubtful that concept was. So finding something personal out about the Constructicon that was now out in the public domain was actually a good thing. It'd give the entire staff a topic of conversation and, knowing Ratchet's gossipy nurses and labtechs, a real reason to actually try to talk with the mech.

This could turn out to be something good. Also rather bad if pushed too far. There was friendly teasing, but then there was harassment, and this kind of thing ran a real risk of pushing that boundary.

Ratchet turned serious again, grin dropping. "Alright. I'm allowing this here, today," he pointed, and Hook's face scrunched up slightly as he flinched away from the finger aimed at his mouth, "because it took me by surprise. And it's spared me having to give you yet another talk about verbally abusing the labtechs. Although I think I know who to talk to about those kind of issues from now on, hmm?" If he didn't think about it too hard, he could almost feel sort of pleased about that. His reprimands had never had much impact on the surgeon, but it seemed that Kup had _far_ more influence.

A vacant kind of terror washed over the Constructicon's expression. He'd seen the future, and it was full of Kup knowing exactly what he did at all times.

"Anyway." The head medic shook away the minor point. "I want to make it clear that your personal life stays out of my medbay after this shift. Including your attitude!" He glowered at the embarrassed mech attempting to become one with the chair. Some Talks really were worse coming from a mech's boss, after all, and Ratchet had no vested interest in making this easy for Hook. He settled into lecture mode with a gleeful sense of relief. _This_ he could deal with. It was like doing relationship counseling with the Witwickys back on Earth. Mental scarring of his mind's optics was going to happen, but at least he could inflict some damage back in the name of fulfilling his duty.

Truthfully, nothing Hook or Kup could do would compare with Carly's pregnancy cravings. Most of them had included Spike, some of them had included Bumblebee, and _some_ had included inanimate objects Ratchet really could have done without imagining in use.

"Leave the attitude at the infirmary door. I don't care what goes on outside them unless I get called in as your parole officer or it starts affecting your work." Which was likely, if the repercussions got bad enough and Kup didn't move to protect his…submissive? Huh. That was an idea that would take some getting used to. "Some mechs are **going** to give you grief over your choices. Welcome to real life, where not everyone accepts alternative lifestyles with open arms. The fact that Kup has taken this public is going to expose you to everyone as a kinky 'bot. That was your choice, Hook, but you have to be aware that to a certain number of mechs, kinks equate to being a piece of shareware. You're big and nasty enough to keep the worst of them away, but nothing's going to stop their mouths."

He spread his hands again before folding them on the desk, feeling weariness settle into his engine. There were always aftheads who couldn't leave other mechs well enough alone, and the war was over. Using his authority in the name of keeping order in the ranks wasn't something he could do outside the medbay; there weren't lives depending on cooperation among the soldiers anymore. The Autobots could get as sneering as they wanted. "And believe me when I say that punching out the worst offenders is only going to make people talk more." Not to mention get Hook slammed into a spark-box for defending his dubious honor. Ratchet had no idea how he'd react if he got a call one night reporting that his parolee had been involved in a fight over this.

"It doesn't help that you're, well, you." The medic shook his head. "I can name seven officers from the Decepticon Elite who aren't in prison right now, and you're the only one in this sector. Everyone knows you from the war, and now they're going to have reason to come gawk at you all over again. Remember the loiters who used to be a problem outside the medical building? I give them until tomorrow to start showing up again."

Hook was starting to look physically ill at this point, visor paling steadily toward a faint pink as he followed Ratchet's thoughts. He'd been humiliated enough when Autobots were showing up just to point and whisper at him because he was a captive. Now they were going to be there again, giggling over the fact that everyone knew Kup could bring him to heel with a snap of the fingers, and _urrrggh_.

He was abruptly very aware of the fact that he wasn't in the medbay proper at the moment. The breakroom had a comm. console. Frag, everyone had personal commlinks, although work regulations banned them from using them outside of emergencies. Without Hook out there like a hovering cloud of doom, the whole crowd of rumor-mongers was probably out there in the medbay calling every friend and neighbor they'd ever had. By the time Hook got off shift, there'd be an entire _audience_ waiting for him to leave the infirmary!

He shrank slightly into himself. They'd be out there, waiting, and he couldn't take the gag off until Kup judged him sufficiently disciplined. He wasn't _allowed_ to.

"But that's your problem, not mine," Ratchet dismissed it. "My problem is that your proclivities are making others' work environment...awkward." I.E., the spiky, hostile atmosphere Ratchet had walked into, and the resultant terrorizing of the staff and patients. "They have a right to talk about you behind your back, and even laugh out loud. Freedom of speech is a right," he said dryly, "even when you don't want it to be. You do **not** have the right to make threats when they exercise that right. In turn, **they** don't have the right to say a single offensive thing to your face. If they do, you're a surgeon. You outrank almost everyone out there." He pointed over Hook's shoulder at the closed door. "Put them on the report for disrespect of authority. You can be sure that I'm going to be spreading my own brand of repression around on the worst offenders, but everything else is up to you."

It wasn't going to be that easy, and they both knew it. However, neither of them wanted to actually talk about the situation. Ratchet already needed to bleach his cerebral circuitry with high grade after shift, and Hook's plating was going to melt into a puddle of humiliated goo any second now. Dragging the details out was only going to make them vaporize in mutual embarrassment.

There was one thing that had to be addressed before that happened. "No threats, cut down on the attitude," the head medic summarized, "and for Pit's sake - keep this slag out of my medbay!" The pointed finger was directed at the bit again, and no matter how Hook twisted his head away, it kept _following_. "I'm allowing this **once**. Got it? Once!"

That got him the most pathetic look he'd ever been given, including the time he'd told Powerglide and Astoria that it wasn't physically possible for them to - ahem. Right. It was pretty pathetic.

Ratchet looked into Hook's pitiable expression of woe. He heard what could have, possibly might have been, almost sounded like a tiny, tiny pleading whine. His conscience cursed and booted him one, because frag if that Look wasn't enough to put Bluestreak's cyberpup optics to shame.

"...I'll talk to Kup." The flash of gratitude in the red wasn't imagined. Probably because, while dominants paid close attention to their submissives' boundaries, Kup apparently favored humiliating punishments. If Hook had agreed to public punishments, barring them from the medbay would likely be a firmer ultimatum coming from Ratchet. And it certainly was going to be firm. No more off-duty hijinks invading his medbay!

He had the sudden, glum feeling that his thoughts sounded as old as he felt right then. What had happened to the hilarity of earlier? It'd been so _funny_ when it was just the rust-licking Decepticon getting his comeuppance. Why did being a responsible person have to interfere with a little laughter? The more he thought about Hook and Kup from the perspective of someone who'd seen everything to be seen in war and peace, the less funny it got.

Well, okay, not completely. Hook. Gagged. That was some funny slag right there.

But. Coming out to the world in a relationship like this wasn't going to be easy for either of them. Ratchet needed to sit down and have a _long_ talk with his old friend real soon. Kup's stories were fantastical, but what most 'bots overlooked was how much planning went into his adventures. The old crank didn't do anything without thinking it through first. They needed to talk about why exactly he'd chosen this mech, ex-Decepticon and Constructicon, as his own. Ratchet was sure the reasoning was going to be obvious once it was laid out, but he just couldn't see it now. Why Hook?

Frag. As much as he loathed the idea, the head medic was _going_ to have to keep an optic on the situation. If Kup didn't step in to protect Hook, that would leave the Constructicon exposed. The aftheads laughing at the gagged ex-'Con would be the least of his problems. The parole system kept the ex-Decepticons in line, but it also kept them safe from vengeful Autobots. That didn't mean the 'Cons didn't turn on each other, or Autobots didn't try to get their revenge in petty ways. There were a myriad of ways anyone could try to take advantage of this, and they ranged from mere fist-fights to outright attempts at violation.

Kup's reputation would have most of those attempts dying before they got off the ground, but only if the ancient Autobot stepped up to the task. And Ratchet was going to kick his skidplate in if he didn't. Anything less would be unacceptable.

Eh, it was something to be discussed another orn. For now, there was a more urgent matter.

"What happens if there's an emergency?"

One of Hook's hands tentatively strayed toward his mouth, but a look of conflicted unease cross his face. He snatched the wandering hand back into his lap before it got anywhere and looked at the floor. Ratchet could almost hear him thinking from here, and he cocked his head at the surgeon curiously. It was a legitimate question. Surely Kup couldn't expect a working surgeon to keep a _gag_ on if there were patients to treat!

Oh, wonderful, The Look was back. It flashed up for a moment, then darted down to the floor before venturing up to stare at Ratchet again. Ack!

"You'll have to take it off for the surgery scheduled in fourteen breems, anyway," the Autobot said evenly, trying to match that Look with a stern glare.

The hand inched up again, but it just as quickly went to twine with its partner in Hook's lap. Look at that visor, Ratchet. Just look at it.

He didn't want to look at it. "Will Kup return to take it off you?" he compromised.

A small shake of Hook's head, and a helpless expression of dread. This was a mech who had no power, realizing that there was only one 'bot available who _could_ help him. A 'bot who could remove and replace the gag so Hook wouldn't have to touch it - as ordered! - and who not even Kup would be able to find fault in.

For a mech who hated asking for anything, Hook had a very effective visual '_Please?'_ going on.

Ratchet reached up and pinched the space between his optics, feeling the need for high grade by the bucket. This was the kind of slag he didn't want to know about, much less participate in. "I..." He lit one optic. _'Pleeeease?'_ stared across the desk at him. His optic shut right back off. "This is preposterous. You are **on-duty**. Just take the blasted thing off, already! I'll tell him I did it if he asks!"

When he risked looking again, the expression of apprehension Hook wore actually surprised him. Either Kup had Ratchet's office bugged to catch the Constructicon out in a lie, or Hook didn't think he was capable of lying to Kup. Was it spying or training that'd provoked that look? Knowing Kup, either was a possibility.

Primus, help him survive the idiocy around him. "**Fine**," he gave up, throwing his hands into the air. "Your aft, that chair, ten breems." No way in the Pit was he going to take that thing off of Hook out in the middle of the medbay like a circus sideshow for everyone to gawp at. "And if an emergency comes through the door, you either take it off immediately or I'll yank your certification and throw you out myself. Now get the frag out of my office!"

The slagger had the audacity to look relieved as he left.

Ratchet let his head fall into his hands and wondered when the world had gone mad.

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**A/N: **My apologies to anyone left waiting. I forgot when I went back to edit that I'd written this before _'Deconstruction'_ finished, so I had to work on it more than anticipated. I'm very much enjoying people's comments, however, if nothing else because it makes me reread everything through the perspective of someone who doesn't have the background for this story already set. It's kind of funny rereading going, "Well, OF COURSE everyone knows - wait, no, my bad. Assumption made. D'oh!"

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	3. Pt 3

**Title: ** Attitude Adjustment

**Warnings: ** Real BDSM (can be embarrassing and misunderstood, even to the people involved. Or maybe especially.)

**Rating: **PG-13

**Continuity:** G1/IDW/WTF AU (post-script of "_Deconstruction_" round-robin)

**Characters:** Hook/Kup, Ratchet

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Shibara__ drew a doodle, and Hook looked far too happy in it_.

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**[* * * * *]**  
**Pt. 3 **  
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There wasn't a cubby or sidestreet between the medbay and his quarters where a mech could duck in and catch a breather. Not a single one. They were all full-up with wide optics and smart mouths, and he had to go stiffly on by as if he hadn't been planning to hide for a klik or two.

The concept of 'breathing space' was very organic, but Hook found the description fairly appropriate. It felt as if he couldn't pull a full ventilation for all the people watching him. Optics pressed in on him from every side, squeezing the air from the halls. They were watching, and taking pictures, and he was fairly sure there were videos as well. He'd thought it'd been bad in the medbay? At least workplace etiquette had been _some_sort of refuge. Out here among the wider public, it was a gawking free-for-all.

His teeth worked at the bit, but he stopped as soon as he caught himself. The last thing he needed was to give these vultures more to stare at.

The crowd loitering outside the medical facility had indeed been present, just as Ratchet had predicted. He'd walked out the door to a chorus line of mechs gaping and laughing. It'd been humiliating as tying the gag on had been in the first place, only without Kup there eyeing him critically. He hadn't realized how much he'd been relying on the old clank's presence to make this bearable. Primus, what he wouldn't have given to have the green Autobot pushing him forward, maybe worming a finger under his plating to yank a sensor wire for the jolt of pain.

Oh, pain. So easy and simple to deal with. So straightforward. All Hook had to do with pain was endure it, bend before it, even push into it. It was just a physical reminder, like a release valve for everything else that was so blasted complicated. No one could possible enjoy scorched cabling from burns or the spiderweb of cracks across a visor from getting smacked into a shelf. Could they?

Hook admitted nothing.

Although the way his visor followed Kup's cy-gar whenever the old clank got into a hand-waving mood might speak on its own. And there was no denying that the one time Kup had gotten hold of a set of laser scalpels, carving perfectly parallel scored lines at precisely measured intervals down the inside of his pet's inner thighs had made the Constructicon writhe for reasons that had nothing to do how much it hurt. Hook still hadn't figured out what he had to do to get a repeat of that reward, but he had no intention to stop trying anytime soon. Not that there'd be an opportunity for a reward anytime soon, but. Well.

So _most_ pain was no fun. The intent, however, changed how Hook registered it. Punishment hurt because of the cutting contempt and disappointment behind it, not because the pain was overwhelming. Kup was capable of making the ex-Decepticon scream in agony, but he'd only taken Hook to that extreme a few times. The majority of the time, the Constructicon's Master played the pain game lightly compared to the twisted depth he tied Hook at when it came to subjugation. Most of the time, that was what Hook needed. The person holding the cy-gar or swinging a fist cut through the fugue of his gestaltlink better than any fleeting physical sensation. It served a purpose like the stinging welds of surgery. The after-effects were the truly beneficial part, but, like some of Hook's Decepticon patients, he preferred to feel it all.

Any feeling was better than feeling nothing.

Some feelings were just…not pleasant to face. It was the non-physical variety that usually left Hook cringing. Especially when alone, and especially when he saw it coming. Anticipation really could be worse than the actual humiliation, but this time, they seemed to come out fairly equal. He'd dreaded how bad it would be, only for it to be just as bad as he'd imagined.

For once, the Constructicon had actually lingered in the medbay after his shift, trying to put off facing the world outside the medbay. He'd delayed leaving right away by running the sterilizer and delivering his shift-end report to Ratchet. The head medic had given him a knowing look and said nothing about being handed the report in person. Transmitting it from the duty station took less time and didn't require downloading it to a datapad and walking it across the infirmary, which had taken a quarter of a breem that therefore hadn't been spent outside the relative safety of the building.

After that, the surgeon had taken his time scrubbing in the washracks, then stopped to get his ration in the breakroom because like the Pit was he going to go to his habitation block's common room this orn. That'd meant enduring the curious stares and giggles from the nurses currently on break, but he'd brought a research journal in to read while fueling. It worked to block them out whenever he took a cube pre-shift, but he'd found it more difficult than usual to tune them out. Possibly because they'd gone so far as to shut off the scrap-waste vidshow dramas he'd thought they were hopelessly addicted to.

One particularly brave mech (Moron #5; nurse of the adequate assistance technique but sloppy aftercare) had even dared to sit down in the seat opposite Hook. That had never happened before. Hook had looked up and reset his visor, startled and wary.

The nurse had blinked back, fascinated. "Soooo."

The red visor had narrowed imposingly. _Noooo._

"Does that hurt?" A finger had pointed at the gag, a little tentative for the rudeness.

The whole breakroom had gone breathlessly still, waiting for a reply. Hook had glared for a second before pointedly resumed reading, cursing inventively in the privacy of his mind at the nosy bunch of unprofessional lowlifes.

Who'd kept waiting. The muted giggles and furtive gossip had picked up again, still slightly fearful of his black mood, but he'd felt them watching him. And the nurse had continued to sit there, politely not pointing any longer but still smiling across the table as he waited patiently for an answer. Hook's cursing had become more inventive the longer it'd drawn out. He'd refused to show any sign of discomfort, intaking his energon via his altmode's fuel hatch at the slow, steady pace he'd set for himself when he'd sat down: twice per klik, with a 2.75% time variance every klik to make it appear more casual. Speeding up would have made the slaggers think that he was somehow affected by them, _which he was not._

The Primus-fragged labtechs had probably put this nurse up to asking. They probably hoped the gag hurt. They probably wanted Hook to be in pain. The unskilled masses were always jealous of the talented few. In his experience, the rabble usually wished ill upon him as well.

With that in mind, when the Constructicon finally rose to leave, he gave a short, negative shake of his head. The breakroom all but gasped at his back as he made his dignified exit.

Idiots.

Idiots bound by workplace regulations, however, something that Hook far preferred to the crowd of strangers that met him at the door to the medical facility. The door had slid open, and a chattering wave of sound had washed over him. The Constructicon's visor had popped wide as a whole line-up of mechs had turned to face him in a grinning, slack-jawed, fascinated, delighted, and horrified wall of living Cybertronians. He'd frozen in the door for a long moment, stunned. His processors had been unable to comprehend what was going on as the dull roar had died away, then surged back at double the volume and three times the merriment.

When his CPU caught up with the situation, he'd stepped out the door only because he had to. Every Decepticon knew that retreating was a gigantic sign of weakness. It'd been oddly frightening to leave the protection of his workplace, however. It'd suddenly slammed home that he was a gagged ex-Decepticon parolee facing a large group of Autobots who had no reason to like him and every reason to take advantage of the fact that he couldn't call for help.

Not that he'd need help. Really. No matter how some of the mechs stared at him. He could easily put down any mech who dared try anything.

That didn't mean enough mechs couldn't take anyone down, like self-repair nanites swarming a parasite implant. It'd happened more than once since the war ended; gangs of Neutrals and Autobots had kidnapped, beaten, and even killed paroled ex-Decepticons. It was part of the reason the ex-'Cons were watched so closely by the government work programs and parole officers. Hook had never felt very threatened, but right then he'd been all-too-aware that if he fought back, he'd be imprisoned in a spark-box the second Rodimus Prime could sign the forms.

It'd almost been a relief to spot the optics-in-the-sky cameras hovering along the street. They were used by the more reviled gossip vidshows to stake out celebrities or likely drama-magnet locations like the Prime's government center. It was humiliating, of course, as being filmed wearing a gag meant that half of Cybertron could see him. However, it'd relieved a cold weight of apprehension from his spark that he hadn't been fully aware of until it eased off him. It'd let him draw in a deep vent and set off down the street as if this were his routine commute instead of a very, very effective punishment by someone now outed as his owner.

The Autobots waiting for him on the street had been scum, but they'd been cowardly scum. They'd followed him to point and laugh. Maybe, given their numbers and something to turn the crowd ugly, they might have done more than catcall and jeer. Under the optics of the cameras? Not one of them risked so much as a finger on the gagged Constructicon.

He'd transformed to his altmode, wincing slightly as the edges of the bit grated as his head ducked down, and sat stubbornly silent in the resultant traffic jam. His regular route had slowed down to a dragging crawl because of the flood of spectators pushing into the lanes around him. The crane had been almost more annoyed than mortified to putt-putt all the way back to his habitation block, ignoring any and all attempts to draw him out. Of which there'd been plenty.

The cameras hadn't protected him from the mechs who were there for more than staring. _Those_ mechs had wholly unnerved him, although he'd be slagged before he admitted that. They were so…peculiar. From experience, he knew he'd get used to the pointing and staring once he adjusted, as horrible as the thought of adjusting to being gagged in public was. The mechs trying to engage him were new and alarming, however.

He'd had to dodge someone trying to 'talk' to him on the way back to his quarters by changing lanes three times, cutting across the transit rails right in front of the train, and turning down a sidestreet. The unexpected detour had landed him driving an alternative route home in the midst of a gaggle of beeping, giggling Minibots. He'd probably get a traffic citation slapped on his record later for rail-hopping like that, but he hadn't been able to take staying in front of the smarmy Autobot who'd been tailgating him. He could tolerate wordless gawking and jeers, but someone trying to engage him in conversation? Yeah, not happening.

Then there'd been a mech waiting at the door of his habitation block who'd been the _skeeviest_ Autobot he'd ever met. Clean enough, and not bad looking overall, but perversion had practically bled off his slimy smile when he'd approached Hook. The Constructicon had transformed to enter the building, seen him coming, and nearly backpedaled out onto the busy street. Just in case giving him that leer hadn't been bad news enough, he'd creepily invaded Hook's personal space, laying a hand on the ex-'Con's upper arm like he had some sort of _right_ to touch a total stranger! Especially one standing stiff who visibly tensed the closer he got. No, no, and _no_. He wouldn't 'go somewhere for a drink' with that mech even if he were offering high grade straight from a Primus-blessed Temple fount. Ugh.

Trying to use that same hand to urge the large Constructicon to follow him down the street had resulted in a violent recoil that'd finally torn the creeptastic Autobot's hand loose and allowed Hook to walk quickly past him into the safety of his building and its wonderful, marvelous, residents-only security gate. He'd never liked having to scan his residence ID at the entry door quite so much as right that moment, not even in the orns when he'd still been stared at for other, less embarrassing reasons. Nobody who didn't live in the habitation block could get past the scanners, at least in theory.

That had not prevented three really persistent mechs from getting into the building and appearing as if by magic to dart into the elevator with him. Someone had probably let them in or given them a scan-pass like Hook himself had for Kup's building. A bribe had likely been involved, as all three mechs had sported mods that'd looked like speaker microphones and lenses.

By then, the terms of his parole had been filling his HUD until he could barely see. It'd been endlessly scrolling through his vision since the tailgating and greasy-toned questions directed at him in the middle of his commute. He'd brought it up to keep control over his temper, because there was humiliation and then there was _rage_.

They'd fed off each other with every turn of his wheels down the street, cycling higher and higher. The anger grew because of how utterly humiliated he was; the humiliation leapt higher as his anger was ignored by everyone around him. He'd highlighted term passages and pulled them up on internal comm. to blare at him while dodging the perverted lout at the gate instead of slugging the leer off him. He'd burning inside, shamed that he had to tolerate this behavior from anyone, much less some nameless creep, but equally incensed that no one was interfering to stop what even bystanders had to see was blatant harassment. But then he'd been embarrassed that he'd wanted someone to step in, because even an ex-Decepticon was still a warrior. Handicapped by his parolee status or not, this Constructicon didn't need to be saved by anyone!

Did he?

The conflicted tangle of rage-shame had followed him indoors, where he'd read through his parole terms again while walking to the lift. He concentrated with vicious determination on the words as he'd realized every side passage he could have taken a moment to stop and recover his composure in was crammed with staring neighbors just waiting for him to walk past. By the time he'd been ambushed in the lift by the three dogged mechs and their invasive talk, he'd begun changing the font style and size to emphasize relevant stipulations on fighting and violence.

Anything to keep him from hauling off and punching the mechs with their 'accidental' brushes against his side, or the stares that were obviously focusing in on his face and the gag strapped in his mouth. He stared stoically at the wall over their heads, halfway hoping for the cables to snap and drop them into the basement. The resultant broken struts and crippling pain would be easier to endure than the attempts at 'casual' conversation. Falling down an elevator shaft would be quicker, too. Despite the three twittering pests' protestations of innocence, the lift suffered mysterious glitches all the way up to Hook's floor, trapping him in a small moving box for two whole breems with mechs that screamed '_newsies!'_ to his well-honed senses.

As Red Alert could attest, conclusions pulled from such senses couldn't be classified as paranoia if they really were out to get him. They were, in case that wasn't clear enough. Not just perverts and newsies out on the street, but regular Autobots in his own habitation block who'd gotten off of work and come up to his floor to wait and stare. Even other parolees were lingering outside their doors, and a loud murmur of conversation met his audios when the elevator doors finally opened.

Before, he'd been the captive Decepticon Elite officer demoted to working as a surgeon under the Autobots. He'd been a novelty. They'd come to see for themselves that he'd been tamed: stripped of weapons and placed under so many parole stipulations even Ultra Magnus had needed a moment to process the rulebook.

This? This was even better than that. By now, rumor had become fact in the optics of half the planet. Well, maybe not half the planet. Most of Cybertron probably didn't give a gearspider's leg about one ex-Decepticon. Er...alright, more than he'd like to think probably _did_, if only because this particular ex-'Con now had a gag strapped into his mouth. The point had been that this was blowing out of proportion inside his head, but now that he thought about it, maybe not. Bored 'bots would latch only any entertainment, and this certainly fell into the range of unusual and therefore interesting.

Hook hadn't been hounded so closely since the first stellar cycle of his parole. Like then, the jovial satisfaction from the mechs trying to ooze into his personal space grated him the wrong way. His neighbors gushed false sympathy as their beady optics catalogued every hint of repression and broken spirits to tell others about later at length, making sure to wring every last iota of sick glee from the situation. The three newsies followed him down the hall, capturing every encounter and zooming in on the ones they apparently thought were friends with the Constructicon.

As if he'd lower himself to befriend any of these lackwits? Hmmph.

His only solution was to not give them a reaction. They'd stare for a long time, just like they had when he'd first entered the parole system, but if Hook ignored their attempts to make him react, they'd get bored again. Eventually, something new, shiny, or stupid would distract the mass's simplistic herd-mentality mind, and he'd be left in peace again. It just wasn't easy to endure the idiots trying to provoke him.

"Hey, Hook!"

"How are ya?"

"What's that on your face?"

"Ahahah, nice fashion statement!"

"Wanna catch a cube? Oh, wait - you can't!"

"**Ha!**"

"Guys, cool your engines. That was mean."

"Not as mean as **Ku~up**!"

He'd never been so aware of his own mouth. Hook strode through the hallway toward his rooming assignment with his head held high, refusing to acknowledge the crowd he walked straight through, and his mouth worked again. His jaw was beginning to ache. The metal bit lodged between his teeth forced his jaw to stay at an unnatural angle much longer than it should have, and it didn't help that he kept trying to clench his teeth. His teeth forced an occasional metal-on-metal _skreeeel_ from the bit, and he caught himself with a jerk of his backstruts every time. It was very hard pretending there was nothing strange going on - nope, just a surgeon getting off shift and walking home - when his expression had a tendency to lapse into consternation from the faint noises coming from under his nose.

"No wonder you're never around, mech!"

"Anyone else ever noticed he's always 'running errands' or 'on-shift' whenever the block meetings are scheduled?"

"Running errands? More like running after Kup's heels, if y'know what I mean."

"Pffft, probably more like licking his - "

"Don't be **crude**."

"Yeah, that's Kup's job!"

The bar seemed to swell despite him knowing, logically, that it wasn't possible. It teased the sensor-laden corners of his mouth. Every time his tongue managed to push the bar forward, the straps forced it right back into place. This resulted in a constant rubbing motion on the corners of his mouth, stretching the metal plating and squeezing the pressure sensors almost rhythmically. That, in turn, made his tongue automatically fight the bar again, and the cycle started over again. He tried to stop himself, but it was an unconscious reaction to the stimulus that kept recurring.

Even during surgery, temporarily free of the gag, he'd caught his lips twitching as the throbbing sensors slowly came down from the input-high. It hadn't helped that guilt for - technically - disobeying Kup's orders had him on edge the entire procedure. _Ratchet_ had removed it, not him, but he'd still fretted that Kup would find some fault in their logic. Hook hadn't wanted to wish for the bit to stay in, but his teeth had champed in phantom pangs of sensation during the surgery. He'd regarded the bit on Ratchet's desk with dread during the post-surgical report to his supervisor, and not just because his supervisor had to put it on him again. The innocuous contraption of metal and strapping had preyed on his mind until he hadn't been able to avoid admitting to himself that he wanted it back, if only to please Kup.

It was one thing to be disciplined, and another thing to be humiliated in public by that discipline. It was a whole different category altogether when he began _reacting_because of said things, just because it came from Kup.

So by the time he'd run the gauntlet of gawkers and hooting laughing to get to his quarters, Hook wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor, tear the gag off, and recover. Just for a moment. A few kliks at most. Although the surgery had lasted half a joor, and that still hadn't been enough time for the sensors in his mouth to reset.

He settled for locking the door and slumping against it.

After a while, he realized the clicking sound was coming from where he was rubbing the side of his face against the doorframe. The ring where the strap attached to the bit itself caught on the doorframe and slid free: _click_. A ripple of almost-pleasure shocked out from the pressure as every rub scratched the nagging near-itch in the corner of his mouth. It pulled the thin plates further apart and pressed the bar into the bare sensor nodes. The sensors were firing higher and higher with every press of the smooth bit, and -

Hook pushed off the door hurriedly, flustered by his hyper-sensitive network, and went to sit in front of his desk. It was dusty. He looked down at the particulates blankly. They should bother his perfectionist personality, but tidiness just didn't seem worth getting annoyed over.

He should also have gone straight to Kup's quarters instead of coming here, and that _was_worth getting annoyed about. Or upset, or maybe even afraid. Kup's habitation block was closer by main roads to the medical facility. The traffic jam had centered around him, but he probably could have shaved a breem or two off his transit time by making the turn to go there instead. But…Hook hadn't been able to steel himself to lead that terrible parade of gawkers to the old Autobot's doorstep. It'd have confirmed something that likely didn't even need more confirmation, but he still couldn't do it.

He set his elbows on the desk and started to put his face in his hands, only to stop himself. The first place his hands automatically would go to was the constant irritant still pulsing mild surges of pressure-relax-pressure against the corners of his mouth. He forcibly stilled his tongue, trying once again to stop the cycle of pushes, and kept his hands firmly away from temptation. This was supposed to be a penance. If he started touching the blasted thing, his sensors were going to trip over that thin line from constant nuisance to constant, subtle torment. Not to mention touching the gag would be disobeying an explicit order.

He was already disobeying an implicit one. Best not make things worse.

He should have gone directly from the medbay to Kup's quarters, and he hadn't. By now, Kup would be expecting him. He'd be expecting Hook, and Hook wasn't there. He wasn't even on his way. He was sitting in his own room like a dumb lump of denial, knowing better but doing it anyway.

The pride he'd thought long ago battered to death had reared its arrogant head again, and Hook didn't know what to do about it. There were staring optics and cameras all the way between here and Kup's quarters, ready to eagerly poke and prod his humiliation from every angle, and he...he just couldn't face them. He couldn't. His spark twisted in itself, screaming refusal. He was ashamed to face them like this, but he was also too slagging proud. He was _Hook_, one of the best, if not the best, surgeons on Cybertron. He'd been a warrior they'd feared on the battlefield, and a Constructicon whose work they'd feared on _or_ off it. He was a parolee now, but they should still respect him!

His courage had returned in a frankly backward way. He wouldn't stand up to Kup, but he wasn't going to approach him, either. He was too proud to face the cameras, but not brave enough to confront them head-on. His pride bowed before the gag order, but a sullen flare of defiance kept him from going to Kup to beg its removal. Not at the moment, anyway. A false sort of bravado kept him sitting here, matched by a sick fear of eager optics watching his humiliation.

What the frag had the old clank been thinking?! Hook had reluctantly come to terms with submitting to him, but that'd been when it'd been a private matter! Private, as in no one else involved and no one else knowing what went on behind closed doors. Now _everyone_ was involved, and _everyone_knew!

...that was a tad hysterical. Not everyone was involved, and not everyone knew. There had to be a few people on Cybertron who either didn't know or didn't care. As for involvement, well, the only ones really _involved_in Hook's submission were Kup - and Ratchet, now.

His hands fisted on the desk at the reminder. His teeth ground on the bit as he hunched over the bitter boil of recent, raw history crushing his spark. He relived the fresh memory despite himself. Ratchet wanted nothing to do with any of this, but that hadn't wiped the resigned, half-amused look off his face when he'd taken Hook's surgery follow-up report and dropped it next to the bit-gag lying harmlessly on the desk. Hook hadn't been able to help glancing at it and swallowing, lips pressing together and jaw tensing nervously.

"I suppose putting it off won't make this any easier," the head medic had said dryly, and Hook had controlled a flinch. He hadn't been able to meet Ratchet's optics as he'd shaken his head. No, delay only made Kup's lessons worse in the long run. "Okay, right. Just...sit down again." Because they'd already gone through that _extremely awkward_moment of realizing Ratchet was too short to reach up and around Hook's altmode kibble.

But, hey, the good news was that sitting in a chair at least allowed the surgeon a pretense of dignity. Kneeling would have reduced his fragile composure to crispy burnt fragments.

Not that it'd been much better, perching uncomfortably on the edge of a chair with his hands splayed on his thighs to keep from reaching up and adjusting the bit as Ratchet lowered it in front of his face. The Autobot obviously didn't have any experience at putting a gag on someone. Hook had cringed as much out of sympathetic as genuine embarrassment when the straps kept sliding down his helm. Bit in mouth first, _then_buckle the straps!

Eventually, he'd been forced to bob his head and catch the slagging thing in his mouth on his own initiative. There'd been a too-long pause as what he'd done processed in Ratchet's head, followed by a graceless, "Oh. Um, thanks."

Thanking the mech being gagged for trying to shorten the humiliation? Had that _really_been necessary, Ratchet?!

His pride had incinerated to cinders. He'd shaken, fine bodily tremors, but managed to hold steady as Ratchet tightened the straps until the rings laid flat on his face and the bit once again stretched his mouth open. Because Kup had ordered him to keep it on, and something tensely unhappy in his throat had relaxed when it was back where it belonged. It almost felt good, which he would never, ever admit.

The gag was an abject lesson, and dear holy Primus, it was the most effective tool of discipline the ancient Autobot could have picked. Hook was going to avoid looking anyone in the optics for orns after this, much less speak in anything but monosyllabic words that all related directly to work. Oh, yes, his pride had gathered its fragments together as soon as the door was closed, but Hook knew he'd fall back to mortified pieces the klik he stepped outside his quarters again. Orders were given to be obeyed, and they didn't have time limits. Lesson learned.

That didn't even take into account what his actual punishment would be for disobedience. What made it worse was that, as much as he wanted to deny it, he'd earned whatever his Master chose to punish him. He'd brought this on himself. Kup had _warned_ him that this was the next step to be taken if he talked down to the non-certified labtechs again. He hadn't really believed the old mech, but he should have known better than to doubt him. He could have - maybe even s_hould_ have - refused the gag when the green Autobot had put him on the spot, but…

Okay, honestly? The only thing that'd flashed through the surgeon's mind the moment he realized Kup was serious was that he'd been a very bad pet, and he'd do anything to appease his Master. His spark had screwed into a squeaking, pathetic flicker of subservient surrender. Altogether humiliated, keenly aware of how much of a public scene it was, and still desperate to please.

Hook, Constructicon and ex-Elite Decepticon, had gagged himself in hopes of earning a tiny flare of approval in age-faded blue optics. He'd kept it on ever since for the same reason. Smelt him if he wasn't a wreck of the mech he'd once been.

He wasn't happy about it, however. Maybe it was because an entire shift obedient to Kup's will in front of everyone had re-opened old wounds of resentment. Maybe he was rebelling once more against his innate dependency on the sadistic crankcase. Maybe he wanted to hate Kup _just that much_ instead of - whatever it was he felt when he thought about his Master.

He'd brought it on himself, but here in the deceptive safety of his room, he was still angry. Furious, really. It was a fear-response, he knew: fear of the backlash this was going to have professionally, and fear of all the optics watching him. But that didn't stop him from grinding his teeth into the gag and growling his engine. That Pit-slagged rustbucket Kup could go sit on a bent building girder and _rotate_. No way on Cybertron was Hook going to trek across the habitation blocks to him! His quarters were four floors, six walkways, and an infinite number of staring Autobots away, and that was too much for this Constructicon to deal with right now.

He just...he needed some time. Breathing space.

Hook was being a fool, believing his own lies, but at the moment he couldn't care. He'd been on a psychological rollercoaster today, and the last thing he wanted was more mind-fragging. He wanted stillness and silence to recover in. He wanted safety and privacy.

He wanted to be a good pet, to earn forgiveness and the soothing stroke of an old hand over the top of his helm, and -

No. He wasn't an insecure toy to be pulled in by his strings and cruelly played with. He wanted to be…alone. Yes. Alone.

Except he didn't. He was gestalt; being alone made things infinitely worse every time.

Not to mention that the longer he stayed here, alone, the angrier his Master was going to be. Kup was going to buzz his comm. console any klik now, breaking through the fragile wall of bravado and falsehoods he'd built, and it'd come crashing down around him. The Autobot would demand he get his aft out the door and back into the public optic again, and he'd scramble to obey because the lies were just that: lies. He hated the optics on him, but slag Kup and his blasted wisdom act if the best-of-the-best ex-'Con surgeon hadn't already begun thinking about all that attention on him. Everyone watching him, totally focused on him.

Under all the lies he told himself, under the anger covering his embarrassment like a poker player's bluff, Hook quivered because he'd never be able to hide his reaction from the Autobot sadist. Eventually, Kup would make him admit that he -

- he might -

- no.

But yes, because he did. He hated the morons who didn't understand and the sick fraggers who tried to take advantage and the idiots who wouldn't leave well enough alone, but that didn't change the fact that he _liked_ -

The Constructicon was going to collapse in debased ignominy when his Master forced him to confess…_that_. He could almost hear the hearty laugh that'd mock him, really grinding the rust into open systems. If he made the old mech angry enough, the sadist might do it tonight.

But that wasn't right now, so that was fine. Not really, he knew, but procrastination felt good while it lasted. Kup would make him regret every second of delay, but for now?

For now, Hook sat back slowly, shoulders easing down, and absently pushed at the bit with his tongue. He tried not to think of consequences.

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**[* * * * *]**


	4. Pt 4

**Title: ** Attitude Adjustment

**Warnings: ** Real BDSM (can be embarrassing and misunderstood, even to the people involved. Or maybe especially.)

**Rating: **PG-13

**Continuity:** G1/IDW/WTF AU (post-script of "_Deconstruction_" round-robin)

**Characters:** Hook/Kup, Ratchet

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **_Shibara__ drew a doodle, and Hook looked far too happy in it_.

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_Times (from TFWiki):_

Klik ~1.2 minutes  
Breem ~ 8.3 minutes  
Joor ~ 6 hours  
Orn ~ 1 day  
Meta-cycle ~ 13 months  
Decivorn (whiiiich I realized I'd been misspelling as deca-vorn) ~ 8.3 years  
Vorn ~ 83 years

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**[* * * * *]**  
**Pt. 4 **  
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* * *

The _ping_ noise wasn't very loud, but it took him by surprise.

Hook jolted in his seat, startled upright and looking around fuzzily before he even knew what he was looking for. Defrag protocols slowly subsided back into the depths of his processors, and static cleared out of his vision as he reset his visor repeatedly. Had he fallen into recharge? Really?

He checked the time and winced. Yes, really. For most of a joor, in fact.

At least he felt better. He'd needed that defragment time for his overstressed CPU, apparently. He sure hadn't been making coherent decisions beforehand.

The gag still rubbed his sensors to twitching, but the conflicted, unrefined chaos of emotions had had time to settle back into acceptable parameters. Ugh. His pre-defragment logs were a fritzing mess full of random sensor data and misfiring subroutines that'd derailed his thoughts every which way. No wonder he'd felt so on edge about confronting the crowds. Had he actually thought avoiding the gawkers outside was worth the consequences of defying Kup's orders?

_Ping_.

Blinking, the Constructicon looked around his quarters and wondered where the noise was coming from. Comm. consoles buzzed; they didn't ping. He'd been waiting for that sound before he'd slipped into recharge, but it hadn't -

Hook looked at his comm. console and swallowed, throat intakes weakly flexing as horror stole their strength. The screen had sixteen _Missed Call_ icons blipping down the side, with two _Message Waiting_ lights under the eighth and the last icons. All of them came from the same caller. The first eight calls had come rapidly, one after another, like an impatient hand had tapped the call keys over and over again. After the first message had been left, the calls had spaced out evenly until the second message had been left two breems ago.

He numbly reached out and checked what he already knew: he'd apparently muted the console at some point in the past. He'd been sitting here waiting for Kup to call and harangue him into reporting, knowing every klik he wasn't in the old Autobot's quarters was a klik he'd be made to pay for in pain and humiliation. He'd been waiting, and he'd fallen into recharge. _Then_ Kup had called, and then _Kup_ had been the one left waiting.

The universe had to be laughing at him. The Autobots had been right all along; this was karma for being a Decepticon. Surely.

One klik? He'd suffer and repent for his error under Kup's anger. Almost a joor?

Frag. Him.

_Ping. Ping_.

He looked around again and shook his head, dragging his gaze back to the console. The pinging was unimportant. He swallowed again, steeling his resolve, and tapped the console's volume function online. It immediately began buzzing urgently, trying to inform him of all the calls and messages. All those things he should have jumped to respond to but manifestly had _not_. Kup was going to throw him down and stomp him into a new _floor mat_.

He hesitated but made himself tap the first message.

Kup's face came up on the screen, and he flinched away from the Autobot's unwavering glare even before the razor-sharp drill-sergeant bark sliced into him. "_You better have a good reason for why you're not here right now, Hook. You think I don't keep tabs on you? Two of my mechs tracked you all the way back to your quarters. If you're thinking you have an excuse good enough to justify going there instead of coming here to me, think again. You got hassled, but I had my mechs on it. If you'd've come straight here **like you're supposed to**, it'd have all gotten taken care of. I was **waiting** to deal with your little tagalong groupies. But you didn't come here, and the gossip vidshows tell me you're in your quarters instead. You think hiding is gonna stop them from following you?"_

A terrified type of shame for being called out on his disobedience warred with horror that Kup really did have him followed. Although that wasn't too surprising, being who they both were. Kup's actual job varied by where the Prime needed him, but he seemed to default to security and training for the city militia whenever not specifically filling in elsewhere. For all Hook knew, the old Autobot had had him followed from the first orn he'd been released into the parole system. He was, after all, still considered a dangerous mech, ex-Decepticon or not.

That ancient engine downshifted, audible even over the comm._ "That gag better stay in until I take it out, and that means you gotta be here for me to do it."_ There was an ugly, ominous pause that had Hook's hands pushing against the desk edge, trying to shove himself further back into the chair as if to hide in it. _"**If** I do it. Y'know, I just don't know if I wanna take it off you, now. I might just get aggravated enough to haul you through the halls to the nearest common room by it. Maybe we should let the newsies get a good photo-op."_ Kup's engine purred viciously, and his voice held frightful promises of punishments Hook couldn't bear to imagine. _"Get your sorry skidplate to my door, or I'm gonna start getting **annoyed**, pet."_

Hook's visor darted to the timestamp, and a strangled moan got past the bit. He was going to find a deep hole, dive in, and pull it in after him. Even then, Kup would find him. Running would only make his inevitable punishment that much more unbearable.

His fingers, so precise in surgery but now clumsy with minute trembles, tapped on the screen until the second message was triggered to play. The pings were coming more frequently, but he didn't have time to figure out what in his quarters had broken. This was far more important!

This time, Kup didn't start out sounding stern. He sounded downright pissed, and the Constructicon squirmed in the chair under his blazing blue glare. Age normally faded the old mech's optics to an overcast sky blue, but intense emotion cycled the optical sensors faster than normal. Evidently, the Autobot was now taking this personally. "_You ignoring me? You know better. I'm gonna call Ratchet and make sure you obeyed my orders, because right now I wouldn't take your word on the time of orn. You have until I finish talking to him to either call me saying you fell into a black hole, or show up outside my door **on your knees**."_

Said knees were beginning to shake as Hook's trembling became full-body and more violent by the second. Defiance? Not so much, not any more, not from the surgeon. Kup's anger came through the speakers like a whip to lash him.

Single lashes became a cat-o-nine flogging when the Autobot's voice pitched low and sibilant. _"If you don't come to me, I'm comin' to you. I don't tolerate disobedience, especially not from my pets. Such a bad pet."_

Hook shot to his feet so fast the chair went over backward behind him. His fingers flew over the console, entering his access code and keying in Kup's comm. number. Please, please let the conversation with Ratchet have gone long! It'd been two breems, just two breems since that message had been left. He couldn't speak, but the vidscreen would at least let Kup know that he'd gotten the message and was about to run out the door to obey like a good pet. He was a good pet, he'd be on his knees outside his Master's door in less than a breem, just please Primus, let his call have gone this long!

_Ping. Ping._

The connection buzzed, but Kup wasn't answering. Hook's fingers almost indented the desktop with the strength of his desperation. He stared fixedly at the screen, praying his Master would pick up the slagging call. He could get there in two kliks if he sprinted, and he didn't _care_ if half the Autobots in the sector followed to take pictures of him kneeling at Kup's doorstep.

_Ping. Ping. PingPingPing_.

Where in Primus' name was that irritating pinging sound coming from?!

_Ping._

Please, just pick up…

_Whump!_

The thud of metal-on-metal impact shocked the bulky mech into whipping around into a combat stance - which was a mistake, because he immediately tripped on his overturned chair and fell face-first to the floor in an almighty klutzy _CRASH_ that shook the whole room. The insistent pinging paused as if taken aback by the noise. Hook peeled his face off the floor and dazedly shook his head, trying to force-reboot his vision. The room spun around him for a moment. The thudding repeated, slightly quieter this time, and the Constructicon's head turned, automatically trying to find where the noise was coming from.

_Whump whump whump._

_PingPing._

_Whump!_

When his visor reset, he found himself looking at the door.

_Ping._

That was…oh. Frag. Oh frag. Ohfragohfragohfrag.

That was the _door chime._ He'd never even thought to - nobody had ever used it. He didn't spend any time here. He only ever came here in the middle of his recharge cycle if Kup kicked him out, and that hardly ever happened anymore. The old crank preferred to keep him close at hand; the few times he was kicked out, these orns, Hook came here and left again as soon as he woke up. He'd never heard his own door chime before, and the last thing he'd expected was someone to come knocking! Which someone was, or rather, someone was pounding on his door. From the sound of it, fists were being liberally used.

His head fell to the floor. He thumped it there a few times, and the sound leaking past the gag this time was a miserable groan. How long had he been sitting here ignoring the door, exactly? Too long.

The comm. call to Ratchet must have been very short.

He scrambled, clawing at the floor until his legs cleared the chair and joined his frantic efforts. Forward momentum made it somewhat difficult to flail upright, but he couldn't afford to slow down. It was too little, too late, but it was the best he could do at this point. He slapped a hand down on the receiver, checked the little screen that showed who waited outside, and nearly hit the floor again when his knee joints went to jelly and marshmallow. The expected green form stood outside his door, but there were also three semi-familiar mechs painted matching dramatic, optic-catching colors. From the way they stood, speaker and vid-mods directed at the older Autobot they surrounded, they seemed to be interviewing Kup.

Even from above and at a lousy angle, Hook recognized the expression on the aged mech's face. It was the exaggeratedly patient one that meant Kup felt the opposite of what that quirked smile and those kind optics showed the world. It was the one he got right before he made Hook grovel, and that wasn't helping the Constructicon shore up his wobbly knees.

His hand shook on the door control. The sides of his mouth throbbed, and the bit choked him. It was one thing for Hook to be gagged in public, because that was Kup's will. It'd been monumentally stupid of him to think himself into a corner during his shift, letting shame overrun logic. What Kup wanted, Hook _needed_. It was…complicated.

Not so complicated was how the power structure in their warped relationship worked. As in, Hook didn't have any, and Kup had it all. Kup demanded, and Hook obeyed. That was how it was. Except that right now, it wasn't.

Hook had disobeyed. Twice now, and he was sickly resigned to paying the price for that disobedience. Worse yet, however, right now Kup was outside his door waiting to be let in. By all rights, he shouldn't have had to wait even a moment. Why did Hook's door not register Kup's access code as an override? It should have. He should have programmed that into all of his things, because everything belonged to Kup in the end. What the Autobot wanted, the ex-'Con handed over without quibble.

But right now, his Master was standing outside of a door that should have opened automatically. Waiting on Hook was a reversed power dynamic, which was a public embarrassment for _Kup_. And there were newsies filming every second of this reversal. Nobody else probably realized it, but the Constructicon cringed to see it. It was his place to be humbled to the ground. Kup should be the one putting him there, not taking a step down himself.

The look on Kup's face was genial, but Hook knew better. Kup was counting every second he stood outside with those newsies as a deliberate slight against him by the Constructicon. Hook had been a bad pet, and his Master was going to make him pay for his poor behavior. Pay and pay.

His tanks bottomed out. He'd been an idiot. Starting with his how he'd tested his owner's word back in the medbay, going all the way through to where he'd argued himself into not going to Kup's quarters instead of his own, and then he'd fallen into recharge. He didn't know if it was an orn where everything had gone wrong, or had he just screwed up that badly? Decepticon karma hitting him when he least expected in an Autobot world.

Primus, he could only hope Kup would be merciful enough to let him at least _try_ to make amends. He'd beg the old Autobot's forgiveness, right out there in the hall in front of the rusted newsies if that would help. He'd be a deferential shadow in the common room, fetching Kup's ration and taking his own on his knees beside the Autobot's chair, lapping it from a cube on the ground. He'd put the fragging gag on after every shift and show up at the old mech's door, prompt and humble and eager to please. Hook would do it all; whatever it took, just to have a chance for his meek penitence to earn sips of forgiveness over time. The thrill of his spark from that would be more than enough to counter whatever humiliation or pain he'd be required to endure first.

He pulled in a long, shaky ventilation, took hold of the scraps of his courage, and keyed the door open. All three mechs turned, and for a split second, Kup's face showed intent instead of mild amusement. Hook told his knees that they couldn't dump him to the floor. Not yet.

"'bout time," the old Autobot said, smirking wickedly for the cameras. "Thought I'd have to file a missing person report. But since you're here, I guess I don't." A flip of his vents, and the green mech snorted contemptuously. "You're real slow to open up, though. You trying to tell me to get lost, or is it like I was telling these guys," he gestured at the newsies, "and you're just lazy?"

The blue optics looked at him, turned away from the camera. The smirk stayed, but Kup's optics were oddly watchful and still overbright. The Constructicon stared back, mouth working against the gag. He'd seen that look before. It was the same look Kup had given him the first time he'd knocked the big ex-Decepticon across the face. It'd been the look he'd worn the first time he left a visible mark, and the first time he pushed the larger mech down to his knees. It'd been there through all the firsts: the first cy-gar burn, the first unnecessary report delivered after a shift, the first order to open his mouth, the first time flat on the table.

The first time Hook had said, "Stop." The second and third time, too. Actually, every time.

He'd seen that look more times than he wanted to think about, really, but at least he knew what the old clank was waiting for.

Make or break time, that look meant, and the Autobot watched him carefully for an answer. _Too far?_

The Constructicon lowered his visor.

_…no._

The look vanished as if it'd never happened. "You gonna invite me in, or are we doing this in the hall?" The tone implied that 'it' would be very entertaining, but Hook knew better. That flash of intent had not been of the variety that even Kup would dare bring out into public.

The newsies were zooming in on the surgeon's face, greedy for the story and the delectably juicy details, but the bulky construction frame did his best to block them out. He kept his expression bland, tinged with long-suffering resignation, as he stood aside. The old green Autobot strolled in past him, and Hook took great pleasure in closing the door in the obnoxious news-hounds' faces. _Finally_. Some Pit-slagged _privacy._

Then he stayed facing the door, because he was too terrified to turn around. Privacy. Yes. On second thought, that might not be such a good thing.

Too far? No, but that didn't mean this was territory he wanted to tread. The newsies' cameras had hardly registered as more than a secondary concern when he'd opened the door. The mech standing behind him was so very displeased, and that fact consumed Hook's world. If the two messages left on his console hadn't been proof enough that he was in deep trouble, the icy silence waiting at his back rubbed it in inescapably.

He wanted to throw himself on the floor, push his face into the ground, and start begging, but he had the knotted, stuck feeling that nothing he could do would be enough. Better to just wait and be told what to do.

"I thought I'd beaten this scrap outta you, Hook." If Kup's voice were a weapon, it'd have fuller grooves carved in it to let the energon splash out. The old mech used it to stab his pet's name. The ex-Decepticon flinched, both at the savage tone and the actual words. There was anger, but - oh. Oh, the Autobot was _disappointed_, and that cut more than the contempt. "Teach me to have thought I could let you out in public without supervision. You lack discipline."

That was not something Hook wanted to hear. The last time he'd heard that had been in the long, long discussion held the orn he'd come back from the Prime's office and knelt in front of Kup in complete surrender to the old mech's will. They'd had variations on that discussion since, but what that first talk had established was how Kup felt about discipline, his opinion on Hook's lack thereof, and how he proposed to change that.

"Clearly, you need to be trained until you drop every orn. Again."

He wanted to hear that even less. It'd taken him a long time to accept that, post-war and spark-torn, he needed to submit. It'd taken even longer for Kup's patient guidance to get him to the point where he accepted that his life now centered around the old mech. The pain had given him focus, keeping him from getting lost inside his broken gestaltlinks, and the strenuous requirements of service had given him goals. His compulsive perfectionism was almost as demanding as the Autobot had been once oriented on the project, and that disapproving undertone to the snarled words brought his glitch back online in a strong jolt of self-loathing.

The ancient crank had only recently begun to ease bits of reward into the mix of pain and humiliation, like a sadist testing new directions in a masochist's desires, or a dominant setting up a stable lifestyle for his submissive. Hook had practically lived for those moments when he was a good enough pet to meet earn those rewards. It'd been proof that he could succeed, he could adjust and live, and it'd felt…good. His glitch had gradually been soothed offline. Acceptance was far easier to bear than self-hatred. Physically, it was amazing the difference between a brutal backhand or that same hand absent-mindedly patting his helm.

It had taken him a _decivorn_ of training to meet his Master's stringent standards enough to earn those small rewards. He really didn't want to have to go through that again, but he could do better. He knew he could. His glitch insisted that he try until he did. Kup would be right there shoving him along, too, just like before, as if the previous decivorn of training hadn't been sufficient. Because it obviously hadn't been.

So when a hand roughly grabbed the back of his elbow and used it to turn him around, Hook whined quietly but allowed it. It wasn't his place to resist. It was his place to bow and scrape until the owner of that hand was finally appeased. His own disobedience had revoked any and all rewards for a long time, and it was back to training for him.

The moment the Constructicon turned, however, the hand seized one of the bit-gag's rings and _yanked_ him down to optic-level with the shorter mech. He yelped and froze, hand half-raised to catch his balance, as his visor went wide and fear-bleached. Less than a meter away, blue optics glared. They were most displeased.

"Guess I need to get on that. Lesson learned," Kup snarled into his face, chemical cy-gar smoke practically spitting out at him as the Autobot's voice gained volume. "I can't trust you to do a slagging thing on your own!"

Hook yelped again, muffled by the gag, when he was dragged forward by the unforgiving fingers laced through the bit-ring. The shorter mech pulled him along behind, forcing his head low, beneath the level of his own optics, and the Constructicon's mouth worked, pushing and clenching on the gag as it pressed into the sensitive corners uncomfortably. He stumbled and went to his knees, but the Autobot kept _pulling_. It bent his neck into a painful crick and made him scurry along the floor as he tried to keep up. He didn't try to get back to his feet. He didn't deserve to be on his feet, not now and definitely not in front of Kup.

Besides, the mech would just take it as an invitation to knock him down to where he belonged again.

Kup threw him forward, toward the desk, and the ex-Decepticon went to his hands and knees. He didn't look up, but he could almost feel the scornful look scanning his quarters. Suddenly, the gritty dust that hadn't been important before was a blaring sign of filth now. "Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that you live in a sinkhole. You certainly act like oil-slime that crawled out from under a wreck somewhere."

His shoulders hunched, and his helm ducked between them as if they could protect him. He cringed but hurriedly scooted forward to his overturned desk chair. It was too late to clean his unused quarters for this unexpected inspection, but he could do this much. He set the chair upright and meekly edged aside to make the offer to sit plain. A plunging spurt of shame entered his fuel lines, chilling him to the core; all he had to offer was a dusty chair? It was a poor offer at best, and an insult at worst.

He kept his visor downcast, which gave him an excellent view of Kup's feet striding slowly past him to claim that offer. The self-conscious, appalled feeling circled through his systems at the deliberate pause before the Autobot decided to sit.

If he strained the uppermost optical sensors of his visor, he could just barely see fingers resting on grey thigh plating. They drummed every few seconds, as if Kup were thinking. The implications of that made Hook cower where he knelt. He'd been a very, very bad pet. So bad that even an old hand at punishing misbehaving pets was having difficulty deciding on an adequate punishment, apparently.

Feeling like he'd purge from sheer misery, Hook inched toward the chair. His knees shifted in tiny increments across the dusty floor, and his fingers curled the closer he drew to Kup's feet. He didn't enjoy pain - well, most pain - but he enjoyed even less being trapped inside his own head feeling the terror build the longer this drew out. This part of the mindfrag game was always the worst. He wanted to at least _know_ what he would have to endure.

And - and - he was _sorry_. He was _so sorry_. He'd had a moment of defiance and rebelled by coming here to his room instead of reporting directly to Kup, but it'd been a mistake he'd recognized even as he did it. He'd been well aware that he would eventually go to Kup and submit. He hadn't _meant_ to slip into recharge! It'd been an _accident!_

When he got close enough, he bent over his hands and rubbed the side of his face against Kup's lower leg. His tattered pride wanted him to stand up, tear off the gag, and give the cocky chunk of walking Pit-slag a piece of his mind over what'd he'd gone through: an entire shift of avoiding labtech's optics and pretending not to hear the giggling behind his back; the crowd waiting for him outside the medical facility, eagerly waiting to see the ex-Decepticon wearing a gag; his reputation smeared to the smelter; his name a laughingstock; his face plastered all over the gossip vidshows like everyone needed to amplify his humiliation.

The rest of him desperately, urgently wanted to slip off the gag and explain, frantically pouring out his side of the story in a bid for understanding.

He'd been trained too well for that, however. The gag stayed on, and he whimpered at Kup's feet, begging his pardon in animalistic, guttural noises of utmost debasement. The Constructicon was terrified, ashamed of his own behavior, and all but shaking with need for Kup to forgive him. He hadn't meant to disobey! He'd known better than to test his Master's warning as soon as he'd done it. The bit-gag was a penance and a lesson, and he _got_ that. He should have humbly presented himself for judgment after his shift finished, and he wanted to apologize for his error.

Please let him apologize. He could be a good pet.

Because under the resentment and the humiliation, Hook was honestly afraid Kup was going to just get up and leave him. Walk out the door and abandon him to his unsteady spark and complete inability to cope with a post-war world. It was a real possibility. The ex-'Con had blatantly disobeyed and ignored him, and that was a level of disrespect Hook hadn't tested Kup's patience with since being assigned to another parole officer.

Before, the old sadist had had a legal reason to keep him under his tires. It'd been his job to keep Hook in line. Now, however, their relationship was strictly personal. If Kup interpreted his pet's behavior as rejection, or decided he was untrainable, he could walk out the door right here and now…

There were far more terrible fates than public degradation, and not just ending up in a spark-box. Catatonia and losing his mind through his remaining gestalt links leapt instantly to the forefront of Hook's mind. He was no longer capable of directing his own life, and he'd do anything to keep Kup in the driver's seat. Anything. He _needed_ the Autobot.

In…more ways than just fearing for his life, but that was the more urgent concern he held at the moment. Mostly more urgent.

He offlined his visor and turned his head to press the side of the bit against Kup's leg for the surge through overstressed sensors. It was sensation bordering on pain, and he welcomed it. Forgiveness was going to be a long time coming, if it came at all, and Hook wanted to plead just to be allowed the opportunity to be punished. His Master could refuse to forgive him for vorns, and the ex-Decepticon would thank him for choosing to be angry. Better anger than indifference. Training meant attention, endless demands on his time and thoughts, and constant regulation of his behavior. It meant guidance.

The chair creaked as Kup shifted, and the mech crumpled at his feet froze. The old green Autobot leaned over him, reaching far behind his bent back to snag the end of the Constructicon's crane boom. Hook's visor flashed warily, but he tamely followed the pressure. Kup rose, still holding him by the altmode kibble, and used it to direct where the ex-Decepticon knelt.

Hook ended up kneeling upright, back struts arched slightly but otherwise straight on his knees. His hands hung at his sides, opening and closing uncertainly. He didn't risk looking back over his shoulder to see why Kup was unraveling his hoist line. The line itself had only a rudimentary link to his sensor network, but he winced fractionally when the Autobot tugged hard to make sure he'd unrolled the entire thing. The connection would hurt if the green mech chose to snap the cable.

That wasn't what he intended, it seemed. Instead, he propped the crane's boom tip on the floor between his pet's feet and used the main hoist line to tie a snug figure-eight knot around them. Hook tensed and wondered how bad this punishment was going to be that Kup felt the need to _bind_ him. Hook had rarely ever fought the Autobot's discipline, and Kup had stopped the moment he had every time. Even when he didn't want to admit it, the ex-Decepticon craved the old Autobot's orders, his hands and his voice. The kind of power Kup had over him ensured that binding really wasn't necessary. His word was the Constructicon's law.

Every knot, therefore, piled apprehension on top of dread, and the building terror wrapped lovingly around the surgeon in a suffocating embrace. Kup had tied him before, but…that'd only happened a few times, and each time, he'd flat-out told the Constructicon what he was going to do beforehand. Hook recalled pleading with him to change his mind, begging forgiveness for some truly spectacular blunders, but he'd ultimately submitted to the ancient mech's will. The cable around his ankles wasn't quite the same as a chain around his wrists, however. That had kept his hands out of the way while Kup ordered him to open his chest plates and expose his spark for torture.

He stiffened, mouth working helplessly on the gag. His main line tied off, Kup now started pulling his auxiliary line out. Why would his Master tie him like this?

Kup dispassionately lifted his chin with one finger and looped the length of cable around his neck. Hook's visor followed him anxiously, trying to understand, trying to predict where this was going, but the old Autobot didn't spare him a second look. He just tightened the cable, pulling until the Constructicon's air intakes and fuel tubes threatened to give way under the pressure. He gave it one more yank - Hook coughed - and used the tiny bit of slack to clip the hook at the end of the cable around an exposed strut.

When the old Autobot let go, the Constructicon stared up at him in bewildered fear. Tied as he was, he no longer had the option of looking downward. The cable wrapped around his ankles kept his crane-arm wedged against the ground, forcing him to stay kneeling as he was, and the cable around his neck kept everything from the chin down completely straight.

Joints creaked as Kup turned and pushed the chair until he could sit down facing the bound mech. The look he turned on his pet was inscrutable.

Hook tried not to shift under that look. It'd be undignified to pull against the cables, anyway. Not that this was dignified in any way, but habit died hard.

"Do you like making me punish you, Hook?" the ancient clank said finally.

The question caught Constructicon off-guard, and he could only stare at the Autobot, dumbfounded.

Bright blue optics looked back, feeling something. What it was that Kup felt was up for debate, however, as his voice held little of the emotion cycling his optics high. There was no anger. If anything, he seemed tired and somewhat frustrated. "Is this what you **want**?" he asked, old-model face creasing where newer models had no plating junctures to crease. He leaned back in the chair wearily, throwing out a hand to encompass the whole mess of a mech kneeling in front of him. "Do you want me to keep putting you down and locking you in my quarters? Do I have t' leash you to my berth and keep my foot on the back of your neck every klik of every orn? Is that whatcha need?"

The big combiner mech cringed. Flat-out cringed. He'd weathered the grizzled sergeant's paint-peeling lectures and verbal degradation before. They'd flayed him to the quick on the inside but had a certain kind of Decepticon-like familiarity to them. He knew how to deal with anger and contempt and sneers. This…couldn't be born up under in the same way. This was open, bitter disappointment, but instead of being couched in the anger of a crossed mech, the unreadable look seemed to convey defeat. Hook had failed Kup's expectations, and this time it seemed the old Autobot was taking some of the blame.

That burned worse than any cy-gar.

"I've had Ratchet and the Prime and half a dozen self-righteous do-gooders venting down my neck all orn because of earlier, and I thought, meh," the gesturing hand was pulled in as Kup folded his arms tightly over his chest, "no problem. They could see for themselves that you could handle it. I thought I had a good pet who'd learned to follow orders. I thought maybe you'd earned a bit of trust, since you seemed to know you did wrong." Now he leaned forward, reaching out to run a finger along the bit. "Instead, my mechs report back saying you'd run on home to hide in here, and everybody and their squadron's on my aft 'cause it looks like you want nothing to do with me. Is that right, Hook?"

Confusion had the surgeon staring for a long moment more, but the finger on the gag tapped as if to shake him awake. He hurriedly shook his head. No! No, he - he hadn't even thought what the gossip vidshows would be saying about _Kup_, much less what an outside interpretation of their, uh, relationship would look like in light of today. There was truly no way to make pain, fear, and humiliation look good, but Hook's refusal to go to his Master's quarters probably hadn't helped.

Slag him, he really did have issues thinking about anyone but himself, didn't he? If he'd spared half a klik to think of the consequences for Kup, Hook wouldn't have even hesitated going to him. He wanted the old Autobot. _Needed_ him. He'd been an utter fool to have disobeyed in the first place, twice a fool to have compounded that mistake. He'd be damned to the Pit before he made the situation even _worse_ by letting the ancient crank doubt how much Hook needed to submit to him!

The ex-Decepticon fought the cable around his neck, trying to duck his head and nuzzle the hand barely touching him. Trying to demonstrate his need and submission, and Kup sighed his vents softly.

"Alright. If you ain't trying to get away from me, Hook, then that takes me back to my original question." His hand rose enough to let the Constructicon nudge and nuzzle it as he wished, and Hook's vocalizer burred static softly as he took advantage of that. "Do you like making me punish you? I **thought** we had an agreement. I **thought** you agreed to be trained, and I agreed to take you as my pet 'cause of that agreement. I thought you wanted the training. You know how your lack of discipline," his optics flashed brilliantly, and that _was_ anger, "gets under my hood. Did I miss something? Am I doing something wrong, that you gotta act out to get what you want?"

The static became a crackle of electricity. Oh, frag. Was this going to turn into another Talk? Primus smelt him, Hook couldn't take that. Not right now. He absolutely shriveled inside when Kup forced him to articulate entire sentences, coherent paragraphs, actual in-depth _conversation_ about what they were doing. Talking about the details of what Hook wanted and needed and expected from the older mech left the surgeon mortified and hating himself. Being told what to do he could handle; he could listen to instructions and follow them with an embarrassing sense of relief. Being made to take responsibility as an equal participant in this twisted mindfrag game, however, tore down the pretense and left him rawly unable to deal with his own reactions.

He could not take that tonight.

He shook his head, visor wide and wild in denial.

His Master eyed him for a klik, dropping his hand to one thigh. The seconds ticked by like he was waiting for the kneeling Constructicon to abruptly change his mind. For once, Hook met his optics directly. He shook his head again, steadier this time.

Another sigh, and Kup grunted as he pushed himself up off the chair. "That how is? Then what was all this, today?" He folded his arms again and looked down at the larger mech. Even on his knees, Hook's head came almost up to the top of his chest. "An accident? One dragged-out, fragged-up, glitched showcase of how poorly behaved you're gonna be when I'm not there to keep you in line?"

Behind the gag, Hook's jaw went a little slack. It…sounded horrible when put that way, but basically?

He nodded tentatively, visor dim as he mulled the words over. Simplistic as the summary was, yes. It didn't take into account a lot of things, but - yes. Because it would have _so much easier_ if he'd just known what to _do_, and the only way he ever knew that was when Kup had him in hand.

"If that's the case…" The corners of the old mech's mouth pulled down, creasing the juncture points. It looked like annoyance but didn't seem to be turned on the Constructicon. "If that's the case, then I owe you an apology."

W-what?

Kup grimaced, looking down at his tame ex-'Con with exasperated disgust that, for once, wasn't directed at him. "You weren't ready. I put you in the public spotlight, and I haven't trained you enough for that, yet. Turns out you gotta long ways to go before you're ready, in fact. I've got work to do, and I should have known not to let you outta my sight until it's done." His arms loosened, and one hand went out to roughly smooth over the top of the Constructicon's helm cowl. His voice dropped to a muttered grumble, "Don't help that I - eh. Nevermind." It rose back to a normal volume as the old mech shook the thought away. "Ratchet was right, the fragger. I owe him one too, looks like, but **you**." Hook reset his visor, confused, and Kup's hand gripped the edge of his cowl to give him a light shake, making sure he paid attention. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have left you to deal with this," the hand slid down to tap the gag, indicating everything associated with it as well, "on your own. You ain't disciplined enough for it, yet. My half of the agreement's to train you, and I failed to follow through on that. That slag's my fault, not yours."

More training, apparently, was inevitable. Putting it this way, however, Hook found that he couldn't disagree. It seemed less like a sadistic routine of discipline when said like that, and more like a strict form of preparation. Phrased like that, he didn't even really want to protest. Yes, please, train him every orn until he dropped if it would prevent a repeat of the past three joors!

His visor offlined automatically as he focused on the words and the pressure of a thumb teasing ungently at the ring pressing into the corner of his mouth. The surge of over-stressed sensor node input set his tied-tense crane lines to vibrating. The bared nodes under the thin, spread plating throbbed, pushed to the limits of their transmission tolerance, yet he couldn't help but lean into the subtle torment.

"You gotta know what I expect before I can expect you to do it," his tormentor, his captor, his Autobot, his Master murmured. Blue optics studied him intently, and the hard creases in that obsolete-model face eased into something fractionally less judgmental. An optimistic mech might have even seen a strange sort of tenderness in that expression. "I threw you out the airlock without a jetpack. I'm sorry for that, pet. "

One finger curled through the ring and tugged until the kneeling surgeon lit his visor and hazily tried to focus upward. Kup rewarded him with another press on the corner of his mouth, and the red visor flickered as the pulse of sensation rippled between pain and pleasure.

"So," the Constructicon heard through the blur of pleasure-pain. "Am I forgiven, Hook?"

He struggled to turn his head, rubbing against the grey hand fondling the bit ring. It was a reaction to the stimulation of his maxed-out sensors, but also an appeal to just - stop. It was finally sinking in what the old Autobot was actually saying, and Hook couldn't help but be oddly appalled. The words all made sense in a logical way, but the idea of Kup _apologizing_ to _him_ had his tanks churning with a strange embarrassment that induced a sense of vertigo. The concept was topsy-turvy backward. Hearing it happen was wrong. It was role reversal, like Kup standing outside his door waiting to be let in.

His Master shouldn't apologize to a pet. Hook knew that as assuredly as he knew his way around the operating theatre. If he hadn't been gagged, he'd have been protesting that everything had been his fault, he was sorry, just stop _saying words_.

This was almost as bad as a Talk.

"Hook."

_No_, he wasn't forgiven, because there was nothing to forgive! The feeling boiled strongly up his intake but died against the gag. All that came out was a muffled, grinding whine, like an engine revving out of gear.

Kup bent down, using the hand on the bit-gag to make the Constructicon look at him. The ex-Decepticon's visor glared a conflicted crimson, and the Autobot smirked wryly. Sometimes, a gag was necessary to talk things through. "I **was** wrong, Hook, and I **am** apologizing to you. It's your turn t' forgive me, but that's your decision." The thumb on the corner of the surgeon's mouth rubbed tiny circles, stimulating the nodes in rushing cycles walking that fine line between cruelty and _yes please just like that_. Hook shuddered, torn between inexplicable revulsion for Kup's words and the teasing of the mech's finger. "Yes or no," his Master said, low and not giving a centimeter. "You either understand what I said and forgive me, or we gotta spend some time renegotiating our agreement until you know what's going on."

The strained-engine whine came again. The Constructicon's vocalizer crackled behind the gag, protests bottled up behind it. Kup's thumb pressed rhythmically.

When he couldn't fight it any longer, Hook's chin dipped as far as it could against the cable wrapped around his neck. Yes, okay, he…understood what Kup had said. He didn't agree with the idea of his Master apologizing him to him - _no_, this was _wrong_ - but neither could he find a flaw in the actual argument.

And, strangely, it lifted a weight off him. The only way to forgive Kup was to accept that the blame didn't lie with himself. It left Hook unsettled, and he couldn't quite identify why.

From the way Kup looked at him, his Master seemed to see his unease. It got another smirk, this one less self-directed. "Maybe we should talk tonight, anyway."

Augh, no! Not a Talk, not a Talk!

"Or," the green mech continued when his pet blurted static in flustered, embarrassed panic, "we could deal with the small matter of you disobeying me."

That stopped Hook cold. The hand toying with the bit ring dropped away, and suddenly his Master went from serious to stern. The Constructicon blinked, resetting his visor as if it'd refresh his memory.

"I seem to remember telling you to lay off the non-certs."

_Oh._ That.

Aaaaand just like that, fear and remorse flooded back in. His spark fluttered anxiously. Yeah, that. Frag. He was in trouble, and there was still punishment to be had for his misbehavior earlier. It was his turn to beg forgiveness and hope it would be granted.

…he probably shouldn't find that as reassuring as he did, but, well. It was his place to seek forgiveness, and now that he was back in that place, it felt like the world had returned to normal. He'd much rather endure punishment than his Master apologizing to him.

"Put your hands out." The red visor flickered, baffled. Willing - please, please forgive him, he'd be a good pet, he really would - but puzzled. Kup snorted impatiently and held his hands out in illustration. Hook hesitantly followed his example, bending his arms at the elbow and opening his palms upward. The aged mech nodded approval, although his hard mask never faltered. "You've got nice hands, I noticed. Surgeon's hands, eh? Meant t' be tools of your trade."

Understanding began to grow, cancerous and inevitable, creeping over Hook as the Autobot bent and pried his own altmode's transceiver antenna loose. It swished through the air, making a faint _crack_ when Kup put his arm into it. The red visor went wide as the surgeon looked between his hands and the makeshift switch. Hook's lips quivered around the bit, and he swallowed visibly against the cable around his throat. His hands involuntarily clenched into defensive fists as Kup's meaning became plain. Forgiveness for him would be a long road, and it was evidently paved with pain and repentance.

Training started tonight, apparently.

The Autobot bent down until the kneeling, restrained mech was forced to look directly into his face. His expression was blank, but blue optics _seared_ the ex-Decepticon. "Lotsa sensors hidden under the surface of your hands, I bet. **Lots**," a significant, terrible pause, "of sensors." He straightened, standing tall over his wayward pet, and waited.

Training, and discipline. Kup accepted nothing less than Hook's perfectionism demanded he give, but obedience and glitches still could not make this pleasant.

The surgeon's hands shook as they slowly, haltingly opened under that steady glare. They freely offered themselves to their Master, to his punishment and eventual mercy, and the switch traced over the vulnerable, sensor-laden palms and fingers. So many sensors.

"Dial 'em up, pet." An ugly order, and a faint whimper in response. "All the way up."

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_A/N: Shibara described the first fic as "Hook coming out to himself," this fic as, "Hook coming out to his, uh, friends," and the next one as, "Hook coming out to his family." Which is gonna be a whole 'nother can of worms to deal with._

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